Telephone operators warn STF about risk of network collapse with free electoral websites

Mobile phone operators approached the Federal Supreme Court to say that the release of Electoral Court domains during this year's election could cause network congestion and, ultimately, collapse mobile data traffic in Brazil.

According to Conexis, which represents companies in the segment, the measure could end up releasing websites unrelated to the electoral dispute, including Google services, which would unexpectedly increase demand on the mobile network.

The result would be slow transmission of information and, in the entity's view, harm to the very objective of the decision – giving voters access to essential information and documents, such as title, polling place and list of candidates.

This Monday (28), minister Cristiano Zanin determined that Anatel and telephone operators guarantee free access to electoral justice websites and applications, such as e-Título, between 72 hours before and 24 hours after the first and second rounds. The decision was endorsed by the Supreme Court plenary last Wednesday.

Conexis argues, in a petition sent to the minister, that Electoral Justice websites and applications, such as e-Título, depend on external systems not included in the decision, such as captchas and gov.br authentication.

As these services are not on the list of domains released by the Supreme Court, users may be prevented from consulting the sites properly.

On the other hand, says Conexis, the decision could end up releasing content without any relation to the Electoral Court.

The demonstration highlights the case of the Regional Electoral Court of Amapá, which would be operationally integrated with Google. To fully release navigation on TRE-AP, operators would have to release access to the Google domain, opening the door to the use of all the company's services, which represent a large part of the current traffic demand in Brazil – search, images, Google photos, Google flights and others.

"Large-scale services, such as those provided by Google, are among the largest traffic generators on the global Internet and require intensive use of network resources to transport content, search and access associated applications", says Conexis.

The entity asked Zanin to preserve the right of operators to temporarily limit free service in the event of congestion, allow measures against misuse, such as volume limits, and exclude google.com and google.com.br from the measure.