The Meeting with Suppliers and Partners of the National Education and Research Network (RNP) reaches its 10th edition this Wednesday (29/3) in Campinas (SP), for the first time in a face-to-face format after three years. With the theme "Share to add", the event presented RNP's short, medium and long term strategies for partner companies to discover new business opportunities with the education, research and innovation ecosystem in Brazil.

At the opening, the event's program brought the strategic guidelines of three RNP projects: Internet Brasil, Sustainable Integrated Amazon Program (PAIS) and Testbeds Services. According to the manager of the Internet Brasil project, Helder Vitorino, approximately 10,000 chips will be distributed and validated this year and it is estimated that up to 770,000 chips will be made available to students in the public school system throughout the program.

Infrastructure opportunities

The manager of the Norte Conectado project, which is part of the Sustainable Integrated Amazon Program (PAIS), Oswaldo Alves, announced that after the launch of Infovia 00, which connected Macapá (AP) to Santarém (PA) by sub-fluvial route, other infovias will still be launched in the North region, with Infovia 01 being the most recent, connecting Santarém to Manaus (AM).

In the Northeast region, there are opportunities for partnerships for exchanges, joint construction of metropolitan networks and long-distance stretches for the expansion of state highways in several cities. In Maranhão, the connection project to the Launch Center in Alcântara (CLA) stands out, connecting the space base to São Luís by submarine cable.

This year, RNP also supports the Ministry of Communications (MCom) in the execution of the Connected Cities project, covering 37 municipalities in 15 states. Through the Ministry of Education (MEC), the Escolas Iluminadas pilot project will offer connectivity to schools in remote and powerless locations, providing a renewable energy solution.

Partnerships that create value

In a chat panel, RNP's executive directors shared with the Encom 2023 audience the organization's strategies for the next ten years.

“I see that there is a paradigm shift in the world of networks. We are experiencing a tsunami that comes from time to time”, said Research, Development and Innovation director, Iara Machado, referring to open and programmable networks.

This is the basis of the OpenRAN@Brasil project, which develops an experimentation environment for the creation of new 5G applications, scheduled for August this year. “We will have an OpenRAN network for experimentation in Brazil, open to everyone, not only for research, but also for interested companies”, announced Iara.

Still on 5G, Director of Engineering and Operations Eduardo Grizendi announced the creation of a mobile virtual network model (MVNO) for infrastructure sharing, which benefits the teaching and research community in Brazil.

Regarding opportunities in the cloud computing sector, the Director of Services and Solutions, Antônio Carlos Fernandes Nunes, presented the case of the Unified Selection System (Sisu), whose first edition of 2023 was supported by RNP, and accounted for more than 2 million sign-ups. Another partnership opportunity is the NasNuvens, organization's cloud solutions portal.

The event was also attended by the dean of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Antonio Meirelles, who presented the project to make the university an international hub for sustainable development, with a focus on energy transition. “We at Unicamp want to be a player in innovation and we already are. We want RNP to be part of this project”, declared the dean.

Check out the full schedule on the event website.