Brazilian Broadband: Beyond Good and Evil

“The impression one gets is that the broadband operators are beyond good and evil.”

Banda larga brasileira está longe de ter qualidade razoável: Maria Inês Dolci of the Folha de S. Paulo posts a podcast on the astonishingly poor quality of service and sociopathic, usurious pricing of Brazilian broadband Internet providers.

The thing about podcasts is that by the time you finish listening to the person speaking the words, you could have read the same words five times over. The eye-brain nexus is still the most efficient semantic processor going.

Os serviços de acesso à banda larga brasileira estão longe de ter qualidade razoável. São caros, instáveis e não entregam o que prometem. A falta de qualidade deveria ser duramente cobrada pela Anatel Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações, diz Maria Inês Dolci, coordenadora institucional da Pro Teste, colunista da Folha e responsável por um blog da Folha Online.

Brazilian broadband Internet access services are far from offering reasonable quality of service. They are expensive, unstable, and don’t deliver what they promise.

This has been our experience, too, even with NET Serviços cable broadband, which you wind up paying through the nose for because its two-nines quality of service is about the best you can get around here.

Na última semana, milhares de assinantes do Speedy tiveram problemas para se conectar à internet devido a falhas no sistema da Telefônica. Segundo Dolci, nenhuma ação ocorre para melhorar esses serviços. Ouça outros podcasts com a participação da advogada.

Last week, thousands of Speedy subscribers had problems connecting to the Internet due to system failures at Telefônica. According to Dolci, no action is taken to improve these services. Listen to other podcasts featuring the lawyer.

See also

• Speedy Sputters Under Hack Attack!

“Telefónica Will Pay Five-Day Discount For Internet Blackout”

Affonso v. Telefônica, based on a true story. This sort of thing happened to us, too.

Zeros e uns (Exame, Editora Abril, Brazil) reports:

A reunião de representantes da Telefonica com o Ministério Público Estadual parece mesmo interminável, mas, segundo uma fonte próxima às negociações, já está definido o desconto que a operadora dará aos usuários do Speedy prejudicados pelas falhas no serviço ocorridas na semana passada. Essa fonte me contou que a Telefonica aceitou descontar o valor referente a cinco dias de serviços – ou 120 horas, bem acima das 36 horas propostas inicialmente.

The meeting between Telefônica and the state public ministry seemed to go on forever, but according to a source close to the negotiations, the discount to be offered to Speedy users harmed by the failure of service last week. This source told me that Telefônica has accepted a discount equivalent to five days of service — that is, 120 hours, a figure much higher than the 36 hours originally proposed.

How much do you want to bet Telefônica denies it has agreed to any such thing? Your intrepid Exame reporter does not even bother going through the motions of trying to get someone to corroborate this Deep Throat with information from someone who will speak on the record.

Interesting that Exame is dropping the “hat” accent on ô in Telefônica — possibly getting an early start on the proposed spelling reforms.

On Telefônica as a poster-child for net neutrality, see also

• “Risk of More Internet Blackouts in Brazil”: Universalization Guru
• “Telefônica Backbone Breakage Leaves São Paulo Quadriplegic For Nearly 24 Hours”
• “Telefônica Crashes 911 And Can’t Get It Running Again”
• ‘Telefônica Fubar Proves Net Should Be Run As a Public Utility’

Initial statements from Telefônica appeared to deny that home users were affected at all. Someone should really go back and look at the whole incident as a case study in how to fail to wake up during a doozy of a public relations nightmare.

“Telefônica Backbone Breakage Leaves São Paulo Quadriplegic For Nearly 24 Hours”

A customer humorously complains that Speedy online service has misidentified him in a chat session, using a reference to the hit film Cidade de Deus

Pane na Telefonica derruba web e pára serviços pelo Estado: The Estado de S. Paulo seems to have the best coverage of this story I can find. Cidade Biz coverage catches a lot of good detail not deemed important by mass-market organs.

SÃO PAULO – Uma pane no sistema de transmissão de dados da Telefonica está afetando os usuários de internet em grande parte do Estado de São Paulo. A Secretaria de Segurança Pública de São Paulo também confirmou que a rede de comunicação que integra as polícias Civil e Militar, ao Detran, ao Corpo de Bombeiros e à Companhia de Engenharia de Trânsito (CET), por conta da pane, também estão ‘fora do ar’.

An outage in the data transmission network of Telefônica is affecting Internet users in many parts of the state of São Paulo. The state public security department (SSP) also confirms that the communications network tying together the civil and military police, the state transportation department, the fire brigade and CET (the state Traffic Engineering Company), are “off the air” due to the outage.

Segundo a assessoria da SSP, algumas delegacias estão fazendo os boletins de ocorrência manualmente. “Cada DP está agindo conforme a decisão dos delegados, não há nenhuma instrução da Secretaria sobre isso”, afirmou. Foram afetados ainda a internet do governo do Estado e alguns serviços do Poupatempo.

According to the SSP press office, some precincts are writing up incident bulletins manually. “Each precinct is following the orders of its own precinct commander, the SSP has issued no instructions on the subject,” it said.

Really? And why not?

The Internet of the state government and some Poupatempo services were also affected.

“Telefônica Crashes 911 And Can’t Get It Running Again”

Vigilante consumerdom: angry Argentines spank the Spaniards. Source: Iconoclastas

Due to this situation, the information systems of the state military police, the state transit department (DETRAN) and the fire brigade were down. It was not possible to report crimes at police precincts or use some services offered by the Poupatempo state services department.

Telefônica diz passar por “evento técnico complexo e raro”; conclusão pode sair à noite: Valor (Brazil) reports rewrites the press release — burying the fact that the local equivalent of 911 emergency has apparently not been working for 24 hours now.

SÃO PAULO – A Telefônica espera concluir o “rastreamento técnico completo” em sua rede de transmissão de dados até o fim desta noite. O processo poderá permitir “chegar a uma conclusão” sobre as causas da pane que derrubou os sistemas eletrônicos de parte dos serviços essenciais do estado de São Paulo desde a noite de ontem.

Telefônica expects to wind up “a complete technical trace” on its data transmission network by the end of tonight. The process will allow it to “reach conclusions” about the causes of an outage that took down electronic systems furnishing some essential services to the state of São Paulo starting last evening.

Esse é o prognóstico que a empresa fornece em comunicado distribuído há pouco, no qual também “lamenta os transtornos causados”. Embora ainda não explique o que aconteceu, a companhia diz estar passando por um problema técnico parcial em sua rede de transmissão de dados para serviços corporativos.

That was the prognosis the company gave in a press release distributed a short while ago in which it adds that it “regrets any trouble caused.” Though it has not yet explained what happened, the company said it is having a partial technical problem [sic] with its data transmission network for business customers.