The National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) launched this Wednesday (8), at the Ministry of Communications, in Brasília, a notice for the BNDES FUST – Connected Schools program, worth R$ 66 million in non-refundable resources from of the Telecommunications Services Universalization Fund (FUST).
The objective is to connect 1,396 public schools located in the North (76%) and Northeast (24%) regions, divided into three lots: around 529 schools located in the states of Amapá and Pará, 526 in Acre and Amazonas and 341 in Bahia , in Maranhão and Paraíba. The expectation is that around 500 thousand students will benefit.
When launching the public call, the president of BNDES, Aloizio Mercadante, highlighted the importance of the initiative for the strategy of universalizing internet access in schools and for inclusion and digital transformation in the North and Northeast, regions that have the lowest rates of connectivity in schools.
“There is no longer any way to think about the world of education without digital education, without digital inclusion. The pandemic showed the importance of connectivity in people’s lives. And we saw that a third of children and young people did not have educational stimulation for more than a year and wasted precious time,” he said.
The notice provides for the contracting of proposals divided into implementation modalities – complete connectivity infrastructure solution in schools and connection and maintenance service for 24 months; and monitoring, with the development of a platform for remote monitoring of the speed and quality of the contracted connection and the functioning of the schools’ internal network, with the preparation of periodic reports for the BNDES.
Proponents of the implementation modality must be companies providing telecommunications services that will be able to compete in the three lots. These lots will total contracts worth up to R$63 million in non-refundable resources. In the case of the monitoring modality, the value of the contract provided for in the notice is up to R$3 million, and non-profit entities must be the proponents.
The selection criteria will be the lowest price and the execution period will be 36 months. The registration period runs until the 31st of this month, and the final result, after the period for filing appeals, will be announced on July 1st.
