The remote hill town of Pirai, 80 km north of Rio, has seen its struggles over the years. Because of privatization of the local power utility and layoffs by the pulp and paper industry, Piraí has the loss of 4,000 jobs.
But the mayor, Luis Fernando de Souza Pezão, wasn’t about to give up on his town. “Bigfoot,” as the mayor is nicknamed, used all his political savvy to pull together two dozen public and private sector partners to build a high-speed broadband network to revive Piraí — streamlining city operations and providing citizens with the economic and social benefits of digital inclusion.
In the wake of Piraí’s success, the governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro has launched a Digital Municipalities initiative and hired Mayor De Souza to help connect 92 more towns and cities around the state.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
