Brazilian government wants telcos to reduce rates, extend service to lower-income families

Brazil's government is in the process of developing new regulations set on driving the country's wireline service providers to lower their monthly service rates and extend their networks in order to more effectively serve lower-income residents.

As reported in TeleGeography citing a Folha de Sao Paulo article, Brazil wants to drive more competition in their telecom market.

In addition, the government wants to eliminate charges for calls made between two different service providers, which it believes could accomplish two goals: reduce end-user rates, drive service providers to increase network upgrades, and provide wholesale capacity to competitive providers.  

These rules would obviously have an effect on the country's main wireline telcos, including Telefonica Brasil (Vivo), Telemar Norte Leste (Oi) and Carlos Slim's Embratel. Of course, the telcos are already gearing up a challenge to these proposed regulations.  

For more:
- TeleGeography has this article

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