Brasilia, Brazil—Brazil opened an international tender Thursday to build one of the world’s biggest 5G data networks, seeking $9 billion in investment for Latin America’s largest economy.
Calling it a “historic” moment, President Jair Bolsonaro opened the tender in Brasilia with a symbolic bang of the auctioneer’s hammer, kicking off bidding by 15 companies that officials said could last through Friday.
The final overall sum raised will be announced on Friday at the end of the tender, but Communications Minister Fabio Faria said the figure already reached 43.7 billion reais (S7.9 billion) by the end of Thursday.
“The first day of the tender was a success, it exceeded all expectations,” tweeted Faria.
The sprawling South American country is looking to leverage so-called fifth-generation mobile technology to accelerate the development of its industrial and agribusiness sectors—as well as bring super-fast internet to the cell phones of its 213 million people.
The tender is for the right to build and operate different “blocks” of the frequency spectrum for 20 years, as well as a separate network that will be reserved for government communications.
Bidding for the latter will exclude all equipment from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, the target of US espionage accusations that have put Brazil in a bind, forcing it to navigate the tumultuous tech standoff between Beijing and Washington.
The world’s two biggest powers are also Brazil’s two largest trading partners, and the country has been under pressure from both sides over the ground rules for its 5G network, leading it to postpone the tender from early 2021 as initially scheduled.
The investments came from a number of bidders, foremost among them Telecom Italia’s local subsidiary, Tim; Spanish group Telefonica’s Brazilian unit; and Claro, owned by Mexican telecoms magnate Carlos Slim’s America Movil.
“It is one of the largest 5G tenders in the world. The potential is enormous,” industry specialist Christian Perrone of the Technology and Society Institute in Rio de Janeiro told AFP.
The government is seeking total investments of 50 billion reais ($9 billion): 40 billion reais to build the 5G network—one of Latin America’s first—and 10 billion reais that it will pocket for frequency rights and use to boost connectivity for public schools.
The total of the awards announced Thursday was more than 7,000 million reais (about $1.27 billion) for spectrum rights, according to AFP calculations based on the sum of the regulator Anatel’s announcements, to which investments to create the infrastructure will be added.
“So far the tender has been successful. Of the blocks that have already been tendered, the vast majority received proposals and many received a value above the minimum expected,” said Perrone.