"Internet in Brazil Comparable to that of the United States"

02/03/2015 - 09h13

In spite of complaints among Brazilians about the cost and the quality of their internet connection, John Cioffi, a professor at Stanford University, believes that the competition in the Brazilian market means that consumers here have it easier than their American counterparts.

"We pay a lot for a very poor service," he says.

Cioffi is known as the father of DSL, the technology which led to the broadband standards currently in use.

He is also founder of Assia, a company which sells products and software for managing internet connections around the world (including 10 million in Brazil), through its corporate clients.

He came to São Paulo to give a lecture during the event Campus Party. In a phone interview with Folha, he had the following to say:

The state of the internet

Very often I begin a class or a lecture by asking how many of those present have had some kind of problem with their connection in the last week.

Almost everyone puts their hand up. What I see, with my company, is that problems occur with unacceptable frequency.

I created an application, Cloudcheck [bit.ly/cloudcheck1 for Android and bit.ly/cloudcheck2 for iPhone], which helps the consumer to have a faster connection and identify problems.

Speed

There is always a movement towards lower prices (an Akamai study on the global internet showed a reduction in the average speed of the developed nations), but the search for quality in the connection is not limited to speed: it has more to do with stability.

This changes as the demand for video content increases, like when people watch content in 4K (ultra-high resolution) or when families increase, when people have children, for example.

Infrastructure

The competition is better in Brazil than in the USA when it comes to fixed broadband, yes.

With mobile internet the situation is similar, but with fixed we basically only have two options and we have to pay US$150 on average for a poor service.

Brazil has been making important steps towards becoming a developed country in terms of the internet in recent years.

Translated by TOM GATEHOUSE

Read the article in the original language

	Divulgação
	John Cioffi, professor at Stanford University, is known as the father of DSL