Big techs and telephone companies fight billionaire dispute over wifi in Brazil

5G has not even started to work for real and Brazil has already become the stage of a billion-dollar technological dispute between telephone operators and big techs such as Facebook, Google and Apple.

At stake is a market of US$ 112 billion by 2030 that, according to telecoms, could be dominated by the technology giants, threatening the evolution of fifth-generation telephony, especially for those who only need access to the internet.

This local dispute reflects a worldwide battle over frequencies — avenues in the air where companies route their signals.

Last year, telecoms decided to pay at least BRL 47 billion to set up 5G networks, the technology that allows navigation speeds so high that it will enable the emergence of autonomous vehicles, augmented reality systems, remote surgeries, among many others. functionalities.

The service should officially start at the end of July this year in the main capitals of the country and operators are racing against time to build their networks.

The problem is that, at the same time that Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency) auctioned 5G frequencies, it also allocated — at no cost — a megablock of 6GHz (Gigahertz) frequencies to companies interested in providing services through the so-called Wifi6E —technology which enables super wifi hotspots.

The telecoms then began to put pressure on Anatel. With the exception of Oi, Vivo, Claro and Tim complain about the regulator’s decision because these frequencies are contiguous to those of “thoroughbred” 5G (which operates at 3.5 GHz) and, so far, few wifi equipment and solutions are available. available in the world.

Anatel technicians report that no equipment has been certified, although there are dozens of requests for approval in progress for more than a year.

Even so, Brazil followed the directions of the USA and anticipated the allocation of the lane for the wifi. Europe and Asia are still waiting for the evolution of 5G to make a decision.

The telecoms assess that Anatel has allocated a lot of frequency to wifi networks — they could have allocated 500 MHz, for example — and that, in the future, this frequency band will need to be used by 5G, which will cause technical problems because this band will be busy.

Behind the scenes, the telecoms claim that the bigtechs pressured Anatel and achieved a kind of “market reserve”.

Also according to representatives of these companies, the technology giants want to build their own wifi networks so that their products work only through this infrastructure.

A Google augmented reality glasses, for example, would work over Google’s wifi network. Users of Apple equipment with advanced medical services, for example, would only transmit their data over this restricted network.

Operators believe that there will be a race by bigtechs in the construction of parallel networks, competing with the sector for the client’s filet mignon, those with high purchasing power.

Today, these customers rely on operator networks to use bigtech equipment, applications and services.

This situation has placed 5G equipment and chipset manufacturers in opposing camps. The giant Huawei, for example, defends the use of this range for 5G. Qualcomm and Cisco lean more towards Wi-Fi networks as a way to spur innovation.

According to Anatel, this was the justification for the allocation of 6GHz frequencies to wifi.

Since the beginning of March, rumors have surfaced that the agency would change its decision. Anatel’s president, Carlos Baigorri, told Sheet that there is no possibility of revision at this time.

“There is pressure,” Baigorri said. “But we are not going to review the decision, especially with such a fragile argument. If up ahead we realize that, in fact, this market has not grown, Anatel itself will assess what to do with frequency.”

In March of this year, during the Mobile World Congress, the main event in the sector, the GSMA —the global association of telephone operators — defended greater allocation of frequencies for 5G in the face of the incipient wifi6E.

In this field, its rival Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, an association formed by multinationals, academic institutions, among other organizations from all over the world, defends that the wifi6E environment is already a reality and “continues to grow”.

In 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certified the first wifi6E chipset and the first wifi device in the 6 GHz band. Several wifi hotspots have also been certified by the US regulator.

In January of last year, the certification of wifi6E devices began. Currently, there are about two dozen of them with certification.

The Korean Samsung announced, for example, a smartphone that also works on this technology.

Also according to the association, research by IDC – the main monitoring institute of the technology market – shows that there will be an explosion in the growth of wifi equipment in the next three years. Today, there are 316 million devices.