Internet in Brazil

The Internet in Brazil was launched in 1988. In 2011 Brazil ranked fifth in the world with nearly 89 million Internet users, 45% of the population. In 2010 Brazil ranked 9th in the world with 13,266,310 fixed broadband subscriptions, 6.8 per 100 residents.

In 1988 the National Research Network (RNP), was formed by the academic communities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Since its beginnings, including its introduction to the general public in 1995, the Brazilian Internet depended strongly on efforts led by the Federal Government through the Ministry of Communications, the state-owned communications company Embratel and its holding, Telebras.

This changed in 1998, as a result of the privatization of Telebras, and the blossoming of private companies, such as Telefónica, Telemar and Brasil Telecom. With the surge of competition for customers, coupled with government-imposed requirements, came improvements in cost, quality, and availability of the Internet to Brazilians.

ADSL was successful in Brazil during beta testing and became popular in 2000, being offered by Telefónica (Speedy), Brasil Telecom (Turbo), NET (Virtua), and Telemar (Velox) with typical speeds of around 256 kbit/s down and 128 kbit/s up. Speeds are now between 15 and 1 Mbit/s down and up and 35 and 3 Mbit/s down and up, but speeds over 50 and 5 Mbit/s down and up and 100 and 20 Mbit/s down and up are becoming more common as prices fall and new ISPs such as Global Village Telecom invest in VDSL2 and FTTH in the larger cities. Broadband access is split between ADSL, cable modem, satellite, VDSL, VDSL2, FTTH, and 'radio Internet' (a CDMA2000 1xEV-DO hardware solution), with the first WiFi services appearing in 2004.

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