During the panel "Broadband: challenges to accelerate a more connected society" that was developed at the Furukawa Summit 2018, a scenario was set for a Brazilian fiber market, which was growing due to the impulse of regional suppliers, and now main investments are coming from large operators such as Oi, Claro and Telefónica. The latter announced FTTH deployment goals to compensate for the loss of fixed broadband terminals.
Sidnei Batistella, of the Abrint (Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers), said that from his organization they are fighting for the generation of credit lines through investment funds and private companies to finance ISPs and added that another barrier to the development of broadband is low professionalization. "The big challenge is to leave the technical area and move on to management. The difficulty is that in many cases there is great technological knowledge, but they do not have a business model. Many will have to professionalize and those that do not adapt will be absorbed by large companies or ISPs that have already done it." In turn, Antonio Roncoroni, president of the Fecosur (Federation of Cooperatives of Southern Argentina), pointed out that cooperatives have problems to expand in terms of financing despite the fact that, in a self-management way, they are covering 25% of the territory, although they only have 5% of the market.
For Jerónimo Saito, of the ICT Technology coordination at Algar Telecom, the impossibility of ISPs to access credit is a barrier to their development and one of the focuses of Algar's business is the sale of capacity to those ISPs. "In many cities they are both our clients and our competitors," Saito said, adding that they have clients in Mina Gerais, Fortaleza and in the south of the country as far as Uruguayana. As for the challenges they are facing as an operator, they said they are digitizing the company to lower costs and accelerate processes.