COUNTRY | Brazil
REGION | Americas
SECTOR | social infrastructure
QII Principles | Principle 1 Sustainable Growth & Development, Principle 2 Economic Efficiency, Principle 3 Environmental Considerations, Principle 4 Building Resilience, Principle 5 Social Considerations, Principle 6 Infrastructure Governance
QII Sub-Principles | 1: SDGs, 1: Wider economic benefits, 2: Technological innovation, 3: Environmental Impact Mitigation, 4: Resilience, 4: Disaster risk management, 5: Social Impact Assessment, 5: Job creation, 5: Capacity and institutional building, 5: Universal access to services, 5: Social inclusiveness, 5: Low-income groups, 5: Children, 5: Displaced communities, 5: Indigenous groups, 5: Elderly, 5: Vulnerable environments, 5: Marginalised groups, 6: Growth & development strategies, 6: Financial & debt sustainability, 6: Anti-corruption, 6: Access to information and data, 6: Policy
Overview
The Geostationary Satellite for Defense and Strategic Communications (Satélite Geoestacionário de Defesa e Comunicações Estratégicas – SGDC, in Portuguese) is a valuable asset of Brazilian’s government that promotes digital inclusion by covering all Brazilian’s territory and allowing connectivity for the most further regions of the country. It’s also a secure and sovereign channel for the Brazilian’s government strategic communication.
The SGDC was developed by Thales Alenia Spacee on a technology absorption program that allowed the Ministry of Defense, Telebras, the National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais – INPE, in Portuguese) and Visiona to study this state of the art technology on satellite development project.
SGDC was launched on May 4th, 2017, with a lifespan of 18 years and a total cost of R$ 2,78 billion.
Timeline
The SGDC was built in January 2014 and it was launched in May 2017. It has a lifespan of 18 years.
Relevance to QII
Currently, the SGDC is the infrastructure used by the GESAC Program, one of the most relevant public connectivity policies of the Brazilian government. Its main objective is to promote access to telecommunications in economic conditions that allows the access to digital services and to foster the digital inclusion, reducing social and regional inequalities.
Through the SGDC the government was able to connect more than 12 thousand public locations, including:
- 9380 public schools on rural areas;
- 356 health care stations;
- 829 digital inclusion public spaces; and
- 149 libraries.
All located in hard to reach regions, especially on North and Northeast Regions of Brazil.
To materialize the relevance of this asset, we can remember Brumadinho’s Dam disaster. On 2019, the rupture of Vale Company’s dam, at city of Brumadinho, caused a massive ecological and human disaster, where hundreds of lives were lost. It was through the SGDC that Brazilian Civil Defense had connectivity on the affected areas and were able to communicate with their Head Quarters and Operation Center, since most of the terrestrial telecommunication infrastructure were damaged. It was installed four antennas, with 20 Mbps download capacity Wi-Fi connectivity, in order to support the rescue teams. One at the middle of the disaster site (on top of a destroyed car).
Another clear example of the SGDC relevance was on the support of the “Acolhida” Operation, on 2018. At this operation, Brazilian’s army sent their soldiers to the borders with Venezuela in order to give humanitarian help to the Venezuelans that crossed the borders, fleeing from their country. To support the registration of the refugees and their interiorization, 16 antennas were installed in several important locations, such as Federal Highway Police posts, hospitals, health care stations, refugee shelters and immunization points.
Benefits
- First satellite to cover the entire Brazilian Amazon rainforest with wide band internet connection.
- It covers 100% of the Brazilian’s national territory, including: the borders; isolated locations and hard to reach locations; and some parts of the Atlantic Ocean (Amazônia Azul).
- Exclusive frequency band for defense and strategic communications (X band)
- Promotes digital inclusion for all kind of public policies, such as: education; health care; border control; and support to ecological disasters damage control
Metrics
Our attendance goals for this year in partnership with other agencies are:
- 7600 - rural schools - Ministry of Education;
- 153 - Public Service Stations in the Amazon - Ministry of Citizenship;
- 350 -indigenous establishments, Border Posts, Radar Center -
- 600 - Police Stations - Ministry of Justice
- 50- Federal Highway Police Units.
In addition, we are close to concluding an agreement with the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health of the Ministry of Health to connect 720 Primary Health Care Units in indigenous areas.
Name of Institution
Ministry of Communication - MCOM