The Brazilian Phone System Revisited

by Derneval Cunha

Telebrás is a Brazilian telecommunications company that was the state-owned monopoly telephone system until July 29, 1998 when the whole system was privatized, just two years after the so called "Commercial Internet" hit the market.  (Before that only a few institutions, companies, and people had access.)

So, according to Wikipedia:

"It was broken up in July 1998 into twelve separate companies, nicknamed the 'Baby Bras' companies, that were auctioned to private bidders.  The new companies were the long distance operator Embratel, three fixed line regional telephony companies and eight cellular companies.  It was re-established in 2010 according to Decree No. 7.175 that established the National Broadband Plan (PNBL), when then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva tasked it with managing a nationwide plan to expand broadband Internet access.  Telebras implements the private communication network of the federal public administration, public policy support and supports broadband, besides providing infrastructure and support networks to telecommunications services provided by private companies, states, Federal District, municipalities, and nonprofits."

Before this change took place (1996, when I wrote about this in 2600), the main talking points about the Brazilian phone system were the expensive cost and lack of phone lines.  They were available, but at such a crawl that one would use them as an investment to beat the galloping inflation (because of government attempts to crush inflation, prices could go up 100 percent or much more per month).  It was quite normal to hear of people owning three or four phone lines just to keep their money safe from inflation.

How much would a phone line cost?  It could be higher than two thousand dollars (U.S.) and maybe even higher, depending on where, the part of town, and how fast you wanted it installed.  As part of a phone line "integration plan," you could pay much less for it.  But it would not be installed at your home before a few years' time (about four or five).  You could give up and just ask for your money back and the phone company would return that to you, no lawyer needed, no problem.  Just go there and ask.

People went to court for those phone-related problems.  There were lotteries (sort of) by the phone company and people with luck would get a phone number first.  This happened even when cell phone lines started to appear.  There were stories that if someone won and the phone company was ordered to give the customer a working phone line (that he had already paid for years earlier), somebody else's line was disconnected (you get the idea - no, it was just a coincidence, probably).  In some places when you got a phone line, maybe you kept it a secret so that the neighbors wouldn't ask you to become a phone message service or to use the phone to make calls.

The telephone booth was the main thing where almost everybody first learned about phones, everywhere.

Called Orelhão or "Big Ear," designed by Chinese-Brazilian architect and designer Chu Ming Silveira, it helped solve a few problems like vandalism and lack of room in narrow sidewalks.  Clark Kent would not use them to turn himself into Superman.  The Orelhão (the name of the booth which became a synonym for public telephone) wasn't very much unlike coin-operated public telephones around the world, except that it would use tokens that could be bought in newsstands everywhere.  Telephone tokens called "fichas telefónicas" would often be sold overpriced and could also be used as cash in some situations, or even as savings sometimes.  There were special tokens for long distance calls.  They were slowly replaced by inductive calling cards.  Invented by Nelson Guilherme Bardini, they could be used for short distance or long distance and were not phreakable or hackable (there are legends about it, though).

The quality and cost of phone service was also something to talk about.

It should be noted that anyone could get long distance calls by going to the phone service station and paying for them (faxes also) if one did not have a calling card, long distance call tokens (fichas DDD), or a fixed phone line.  But in places like Rio de Janeiro, it could cause you a nervous breakdown to rely on phones, for sometimes they would jam when it rained.  But I lived in places like Paris, France and the quality of phone service wasn't that much better.  Most Brazilian capitals are small towns and the fixed phone calls were so cheap, it was a dream (before 1998, that is).  And they were even cheaper after midnight.  Everybody that could would only use modems and make long distance calls after midnight and during weekends.

After Privatization

Today, Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency) has inherited the powers of granting, regulating, and supervising telecommunications in Brazil, as well as much technical expertise and other material assets.

There came privatization of the Brazilian phone companies.  The big telecommunications companies got in and things started to get better, at least some of them.  One can go online, identify himself/herself, choose a plan, fill out a registration form, and wait for installation.  That for a fraction of the cost of a fixed phone line.

But everybody (and his/her sister, father, and mother) has a cell phone.  Teachers sometimes have an issue with that since many are using their cell phones instead of listening to classes.  A fun fact is that cell phone muggers are so despised, other criminals beat them up when they get jailed for robbery.  It's tough to find mobiles with limited capabilities for sale, that is mobiles with only voice calls, text messages, and no Internet.  If one does get a smartphone, feature phone, or any kind of mobile, they surely will receive ads or offers for extra services like WhatsApp and Facebook.  If he/she presses the wrong button, they will pay for things they don't use.  And people can choose prepaid or postpaid plans.  A postpaid plan is somewhat expensive, but students and people moving to new addresses sometimes resort to those plans as a means of proving they live where they live.

There are several cell phone operators, like Vivo, Claro, Tim, and Oi.  In order to start using a cell phone, one has to buy a SIM card at an official operator, newstand, street seller, etc.  Even Brazil's postal service sells SIM cards.  There was a time one could choose a cell number from the numbers the seller had available (an interesting feature, sometimes).  Today, you put in the SIM card, make your phone call, and get a text message with your new, randomly assigned number.  You have to produce a CPF (Brazilian Taxpayer Registry) to complete activation.  Non-Brazilian residents either ask somebody to do it for them or contact some operator's special service.  Some world travelers rant quite a bit about it in their books.

How much does it cost?

Sometimes it's a free SIM (but the plan is expensive).  In São Paulo, one can get a good meal for around US$3.50.  A SIM card could cost two or three dollars.  And that's about the least amount one pays on most plans just to keep the SIM "alive" (the cell phone operators' companies do cancel them if you don't keep paying a minimum prepaid amount per month).  To make a phone call, that depends on the plan.  It could be US$0.25 to 0.50, but on some plans, calls to fixed line phones are cheaper.  Charges can be different if one is calling another cell phone operator, so people sometimes have two, three, or four different SIMs from different companies, just to make sure they can contact people paying less per call.  The duration of the phone call would cost more or maybe it would cost nothing.  Suppose you dial a number of the same cell phone operator.  Sure, sometimes, a cell phone operator's company will mysteriously cut your phone call if you take too much time calling your girlfriend or somebody.  I've used plans where one could call the same cell phone operator with the person out of town that would cost almost nothing.  You send the SIM card by snail mail or some other way and that can result in... long distance calls by roaming, paying peanuts.  I'm not sure that still works.

Today, cell phone operators get their money from Internet services.

Most people have a smartphone and, even if you don't (e.g. Nokia 1100), if you don't watch out, you end up paying US$2.50 per week because you pressed the wrong button when receiving an SMS message.  But back to smartphones - yes, sure, of course you can go to some operators' support help phones and ask them not to charge for Internet because you don't want it.  You can do that.  Does that work and do they stop charging you?  Sometimes they do.  As a matter of fact, it's tough to find those old cell phones or any phones that don't allow you to access Facebook or WhatsApp.  I did.  Robbers and pickpockets don't like them.

The worst thing about Internet service is that they sell you megabits, not megabytes.

That means division by eight when downloading binary.  Not to say that many services are free, but you are not accessing plain HTML when you do that - you download images, etc.  That will eat up the bandwidth plan bucks you spend when using Internet.  And they don't need to provide all the bandwidth they sell.  If they (the cell phone operators) provide 40 percent of what you bought, they are good.  I know of a guy who was complaining that he could download X, but only upload X/2.  Meaning that if you're gonna use cloud computing, you better check it out - it might not be so cheap to store things online.

Good thing traffic shaping is forbidden by law in Brazil, thanks to Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet.  But yes, people complain all the time that when you use YouTube, the Internet is not as fast as when you use SMS .  There are tools available to check those things.  I'm not sure if most people do that.  Also, I've lost track of the number of times I heard friends complaining that their good Internet plan was replaced by something worse.  Even with laws, I'm not sure Internet operators will stop trying to squeeze more money out of everybody's pockets.

WhatsApp Messenger is much more than an app here in Brazil.

It is quite a world apart.  There are people who earn money with groups, say, warning about how to beat a radar traffic ticket.  Or other subjects like how to study for better grades.  Two or three people get to know each other, they form a WhatsApp group to share everything.  Also, apps and text messages are being used as evidence here and there in court.  Like the guy who admitted through WhatsApp that he was probably the one that got the woman pregnant.  The judge saw the message and ruled that he should pay to cover prenatal costs (there's a law about it in Brazil - people can be forced by law to pay alimony and wait until childbirth to check paternity).  Sometimes WhatsApp gets blocked in Brazil.  And people talk about switching to Viber or other software that allows for voice communication using Internet.

One thing is for sure: not many people use public payphones today.

That's a bad thing (IMHO).  They are cheaper when calling fixed phones.  And there are numbers that can't be called by cell phones.  The problem is vandalism puts lots of them out of order.  And those calling cards are getting harder and harder to find (times have changed - some time ago, people would keep and trade them, just like stamp collectors do with stamps).  Newsstands do have them for sale, sometimes at twice the price.  And everybody uses cell phones, which means the calling cards go fast if one uses them for calling cell phones.

Even if you do have those calling cards, you have to find a working public phone that accepts them.  The slot for the calling card is many times vandalized.  People who do use public phones use them to call collect.  That is, dialing 9 plus operator plus number or 9090 plus number in case it's a local phone call.

To find a public payphone in working order is akin to finding and hunting rare Pokémon.  One can never be sure if you're gonna find one when you need it (if you're curious, check #telefonepublico or #telefonepublicoquebrado).

Brazilian wiretapping deserves not an article but a whole book in itself.

It's so widely done by the police.  In 2006 at a conference, people told me some cell phone operators would have over a hundred persons working with wiretap requests.  Wiretapping by software is being developed and used all around.  I'll bet this is not done with outdated software and hardware.

Sure, there are scandals with wiretaps illegally being made.  On the other hand, organized crime have their own tricks.  They build their own "call centers" here and there and pay people inside phone companies to get them discarded phone numbers that can't be wiretapped (of course, I heard about it because they arrested people for that offense).

Cell phone blocking or jamming is illegal here.  The authorities tried things like that in prisons, but found out criminals resorted to smuggled satellite phones...

Like in the USA and other countries, the use of cell phone technology is changing things.

In the old days, women would guard their cell phone numbers for fear of stalking.  Today, that is no longer the case.

Everywhere you go, people takes pictures and share them on Instagram (mine is @barataeletrica).

There is no privacy.