Infrastructure and Business Model for Universal Broadband Access in Developing Regions: The Ceara State Digital Belt

With regard to digital services access, many rural and remote urban area in developing countries are underserved, if served at all. In a monopolized environment, telecommunications are of low quality and costly. Broadband Internet and other digital services are restricted to small percentage of people. In some cases the operator prefers to pay fines instead of providing services to remote areas. In this paper we present an infrastructure together with its business model that is being installed in the Brazilian Ceara state. This infrastructure was entirely constructed by the state government, but the operational costs (OPEX) will be paid by investors willing to share data transportation. Different groups will be chosen among interested investors by public auction, in order to enforce competition. Moreover, a new state company will be created that will offer low cost data transportation services, assuring that high bandwidth will be available to more than 80% of the state population.