Minister will launch 5G in Brasilia, but will not be able to campaign for the government

The Minister of Communications, Fábio Faria (PSD-RN), pressed the maximum for 5G telephony to arrive in the country before the election campaigns, but President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) will not be able to politically make money with the launch of the service in the country, planned for this Wednesday (6), in Brasília.

Electoral legislation prohibits prospective candidates, especially government officials, from holding public events for self-promotion.

Even so, the minister confirmed his presence at the TIM event, scheduled for this Tuesday (5), in Brasília. Faria told Sheet that he is not a candidate and that no one from the government should be present due to legal restrictions.

“We cannot say that it is a service launched by the government,” he said.

With some mishaps, 5G chips will begin to be sold by operators in the federal capital from this Wednesday (6).

For this, the companies will have the endorsement of Gaispi (Group for Monitoring the Implementation of Solutions for Interference Problems), the name of the group led by Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency) for the implementation of 5G in the country.

In an extraordinary meeting, the group must approve the release for telephone operators to start selling chips on Wednesday. Before that, telecoms must pay a fee, something scheduled for Tuesday.

The measure was announced on Monday by Anatel advisor Moisés Moreira, who presides over Gaispi, at an industry event promoted by Teletime in São Paulo.

THE Sheet, the counselor stated that the decision will be taken because the companies have fulfilled the required technical and regulatory conditions. They managed, for example, to install filters on professional satellite dishes and distribute reception kits to beneficiaries of the Cadastro Único.

There was also a cleaning of the 3.5 Ghz (gigahertz) band, a frequency that was in use by broadcasting and will now be used in 5G.

Frequencies are avenues in the air through which telecoms carry their signals. Outside of them, interference occurs.

Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre are advanced in the process and should be the next capitals to launch the service.

With the release, operators will start selling 5G chips in their stores. They are different from those that were already being sold.

The new ones will work on their own network built just for “pure” 5G. The others simulated the speed of 5G on the network built in use with 4G and 4.5G.

Initially, all capitals should launch 5G by the end of July this year — this was a requirement of the 5G auction notice, which took place in November last year.

The so-called “pure blood” 5G will have to be provided on an entirely new network and in the 3.5 GHz (gigahertz) frequency bands — today exploited by broadcasting and satellites.

The deadline for the release of this band was, originally, June 30, and the deadline for the fulfillment of the first obligation targets by the operators, July 31 – precisely the activation of antennas in the proportion of 1 for every 100 thousand inhabitants in the 26 capitals and in the Federal District.

However, the recent round of confinement in China to try to contain new cases of Covid threatened the start of 5G operation in Brazil.

By decision of Anatel, the sale of packages, scheduled for the end of July in all capitals, may suffer delays of up to two months, remaining for September.

This possibility of grace period was already foreseen in the auction notice and, according to Gaispi, “the lockdown in China, the shortage of semiconductors, the limitations of air transport and the delay in customs clearance impacted the project”.

The telecoms, which will have to build new networks exclusively for 5G, claim that there was a delay in sending network equipment and filters capable of shielding the new frequency range from interference due to confinement.