Custo Brasil

Telecoms in Brazil

Living the custo Brasil

A YEAR ago my Brazilian mobile phone stopped working properly. The problem was not the device, but the network. Despite being switched on and a good signal showing, calls would be routed to voicemail—and the voicemail only arrive in my inbox several hours later. E-mails arrived sporadically. Often I was unable to make calls myself. When I did manage to talk to someone I could barely hear them. Calls would break up and end abruptly.
Asking around I discovered that many of my Brazilian friends who were with the same network, TIM, were having the same problems. One had gone into a shop to complain. Oh, we sold too many contracts this year, the sales assistant said blithely, and now the network is always overloaded. She estimated it would take "a few years" for the infrastructure to catch up with the glut of new customers.
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