- Title: BRAZIL: Rio de Janeiro slum gets free wireless Internet connection
- Date: 20th March 2009
- Summary: CLOSE OF BOY'S FACE (SOUNDBITE) (Portuguese) 11-YEAR-OLD SLUM RESIDENT, WILLIAM MACHADO, SAYING: "I access Orkut (networking website), many things, school research…" VARIOUS OF WILLIAM MACHADO USING COMPUTER
- Embargoed: 4th April 2009 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Brazil
- Country: Brazil
- Topics: Science / Technology,Social Services / Welfare
- Reuters ID: LVAB2JTR1DR4O60WHFGOM1VM9SBX
- Story Text: The nearly 10,000 residents of the Santa Marta slum in Rio de Janeiro can now navigate the Internet from any spot on the steep maze of shacks that lies under the Christ the Redeemer statue.
The $218,000-dollar free WiFi project is part of a wider experimental program launched by Rio's state government in late 2008 to transform the city's violent favelas.
In November, the police invaded the Santa Marta community, drove out the Red Command drug gang and surprised residents by staying in the slum, starting a plan they intend to expand to other slums.
According to government officials, unlimited Internet access will also be offered in other poor areas such as the famed City of God and Rocinha slums.
Sitting in a small room set up at the community's entrance, 11-year-old William Machado checked his emails and did research for a school project on one of the eight computers installed by the government.
"I access Orkut (networking website), many things, school research…," he said.
The sixteen WiFi antennas distributed throughout the hillside community are likely to improve the life of a population once muzzled by drug war.
Rio's Secretary of Science and Technology, Rubens Andrade, said Brazil was leading global efforts to democratize Internet access.
"We did some research and found out that Santa Marta is most likely the largest community with (free) WiFi internet in the world. This shows the state of Rio, Brazil, is a leader in democratizing internet access," he said.
But the latest figures from the government's statistic agency show that nearly 60 percent of the South American country's population has never had access to the Internet.
And for the millions who live in Rio's crime-ridden slums, free broadband connection is far from being a top concern.
Thiago Firmino, one of the few Santa Marta residents who owns a laptop, said wireless broadband seemed out of reach for the favela and that the initiative took him by surprise.
"It's not like it's a bogeyman. It's something we now have. It's something we imagined only rich people, people with money had, and we now saw that it isn't, that it is something simple that we can now benefit from. It's like we now have one foot out the door," he said, while chatting with friends online.
But the government's plan to drive out drug gangs and offer free Internet connection still faces major challenges. The German complex and many of Rio's nearly 1,000 other slums are far bigger and less contained than the hillside Santa Marta, and the police suffer from a lack of training and resources. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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