United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) makes a grant to finance the complete financial and technical feasibility study of the Digital Forest project.

The government of the  State of Acre recognizes that the right of citizens to information is fundamental for both social justice and competitiveness in an economy that is ever more globalized and knowledge-based.  In other Brazilian states there are municipalities that recognize this right or have already realized it. But it seems that Acre is the first state, other than the Federal District, that seeks to realize this right by building wireless networks with free public access and covering the entire state. In both cases, the goal is to reach 100% coverage of their territory by the end of 2010.

In December 2007, Telemática e Desenvolvimento Ltda. was contracted by the Secretariat of Administrative Management to prepare three studies related to the Digital Forest project, which seeks to bring broadband internet services to all of Acre's 22 municípios as an integral part of the vision of sustainable development and of florestania that guides the socio-economic development policies of this state.

A first phase would include the capital of Rio Branco and its surrounding muncípios and at the same time the second city of the state, Cruzeiro do Sul, and its neighboring municípios. In a second phase the network would be extended to the municípios along BR-364, which cuts the state from its border with Rondônia almost to its northwestern border with Peru and BR-317, which reaches Assis Brasil in the southwest of the state on the frontier with Bolivia (see map).

    Acre's Road Network and Proposed Segmentation of Digital Forest Network

In a final stage, the network would be extended to  the four remaining municípios and the rural zones of all 22 municípios not reachable economically by fiber optic landlines, including indigenous and riverine communities. 

Because of its geography, in Acre it will be necessary to use satellite connections to complement landlines, always making use of wireless technologies (WiMAX, Wi-Fi and/or Wi-Mesh) for local distribution of the signal. The provisional name of the project is Digital Forest, and the responsible agency is the Secretariat of Administrative Management, that also coordinate the OCA project building "one-stop shop" citizen service centers in Rio Branco and Cruzeiro do Sul a program to develop Acre's e-government portal to make basic public services available to citizens of the state.  Building roads in the Amazon is a herculean task and extremely costly. The digital  highways seem to be the most viable solution for shortening distances and reducing isolation.

Below you can see some photographs taken during the visit of Peter Knight, President of Telemática e Desenvolvimento Ltda., to Acre on 11-13 December 2007. See also a column in the magazine Banco Hoje that discusses the policies to be supported.