55 million Brazilians go without internet for a week every month

A quarter of the Brazilian population spends the equivalent of a week without internet every month. This is because 45% of the poorest users (classes C, D and E) have mobile phone plans that run out before the month ends. The average duration of a package is 23 days, but it reaches 19 days among the most vulnerable.

The data are from a survey on usage and browsing habits on the network carried out by the Locomotiva Institute and by Idec (Institute for Consumer Protection). The information was collected by telephone from 26 July to 12 August, with a thousand people.

The sample is made up of men and women aged 16 or over who access the internet by cell phone and are in classes C, D and E, proportionally distributed according to the parameters of the PNAD (National Household Sample Survey), of the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.

It is possible to conclude that these people are without internet because 91% of them use their smartphone as their main access device. If they don’t have a mobile plan, therefore, they don’t have internet. Desktop computers and notebooks represent 3% and 4% of access, respectively.

Public, private Wi-Fi or Internet routing from other cell phones are the alternatives for this population that is deprived of access for seven days or more.

The latest TIC Households, by Cetic (Center for Studies on Information and Communication Technologies) points to similar data: 90% of users in the D and E range connect to the internet only through their cell phones. In class C, the index drops to 58%.

The average monthly expense with data plans is R$43 (R$33 among those that have prepaid, the same average value for users in class D and E).

Internet access grows every year in Brazil and it only has room to advance among the poorest, since bands A and B are 100% covered. Although 83% of households have some connection, it happens unevenly: the signal strength differs from centers to suburbs, which have fewer antennas, and remote regions have precarious or non-existent fiber infrastructure compared to metropolises.

The survey shows that, given the lack of internet, 66% have already stopped performing some online activity, such as researching whether information received was false news (30%), following classes or courses (35%), accessing public services (33% ), transfer money (43%), schedule an exam (28%), access a health service (31%), or seek information about Covid-19 (36%).

“Connectivity is a means of democratizing access to information and this differentiated access accentuates the educational gap between the poorest and the richest. The micro-entrepreneurs who survived the pandemic had internet to sell in virtual stores, to offer their services by application” , says Renato Meirelles, president of Locomotiva. “The poor young man had ten days less to study.”

The modality of internet access is not a solitary problem in digital inequality. The number of computers and cell phones per home and the type of device used also impact families’ routine. Computer or laptop proved essential for more recurrent activities during the pandemic.

According to Fabio Senne, research coordinator at Cetic.br/NIC.br, 90% of the poorest users access the internet only by cell phone. “There is no teleworking or remote teaching like that. Only 13% of this class used a computer to use the internet”, he says.

Social networks

The use of social networks does not change with the end of data packages because operators in Brazil adopt the practice called zero rating, or sponsored access: Internet use in some applications, such as WhatsApp, YouTube or Facebook, are not deducted from the franchise.

“Although the situation seems more comfortable, it ends up trapping users in certain applications and implying a bias in internet use — which is even prohibited by the Marco Civil da Internet, which determines the guarantee of net neutrality”, he says the search.

“People without internet are limited to WhatsApp. If they receive fake news, they cannot check the news. This is worrying with the approaching elections”, says Camila Leite, a telecommunications and digital rights lawyer at Idec. According to the expert, 13% of these people have Telegram, but that does not mean that they use the application every day.

In addition, she says that prepaid, as it does not have a monthly account commitment, charges proportionally more per megabit, “another manifestation of inequality in the mobile internet”.

When contacted, Anatel stated that the practice of zero rating does not conflict with legislation.

Said art. 7 of the Marco Civil da Internet provides the user’s right not to suspend the Internet connection, except for a charge directly resulting from its use.

“The franchise does not conflict with the legislation, since it is characteristic of the offer, which the consumer chooses to hire, at a certain price, a certain volume of data to enjoy during a certain time”, he highlighted.

“In the same way, offering zero rating as part of the service plan’s features, as long as the user is informed in advance of the rules, is also not contrary to the MCI.”