Phase 2: unboxing in Garibaldi (Rio Grande do Sul)
Before taking new equipment to the forest, it pays to get to know it somewhere you can easily turn back. In November 2025, the TECER team spent a week in Garibaldi, in the hills of Rio Grande do Sul, unboxing the new generation of TVWS radios and the LoRa radios running Meshtastic. Vineyards took the place of the forest. The question was the same as in Phase 1: does the equipment work as promised?
November 7, 2025
Phase 2: signal on the air, internet at a standstill
Picture a badge that opens a building’s front gate but none of the doors inside. The person gets in, is recognized and is given a room number, but cannot leave the lobby. That was the situation of TECER’s new TVWS radios after the field test in Rio Grande do Sul. Between December 2025 and March 2026, the team tried to find out which door was locked.
December 15, 2025
Phase 2: visiting the communities and the project sites
Before installing a network, you have to get to know the place where it will live: who will use it, where the internet will come from, where the antennas can go and what lies in between. In January 2026, with the TVWS investigation still under way, the TECER team spent a week in Pará doing just that. It visited the partner communities and possible installation sites, studied the rooftop of PCT Guamá as a future option for the internet exit and, on the same trip, took part in a community network hackathon on Cotijuba island.
January 25, 2026
Phase 2: the Internet Forum, the final site and a new round of tests
At the end of May 2026, the TECER team went back to Belém with three tasks on the same trip: take part in the Brazilian Internet Forum, confirm with the community where the network would be installed, and resume, on the bench, the investigation of the TVWS radios that brought the link up but did not let the internet through.
June 2, 2026
Phase 2: installing the network with the community
After months of bench work, visits and tests, the network came out of its boxes and into the territory. Between 3 and 7 August 2026, the TECER team and the quilombola community of Guajará Miri installed, together, the three layers planned for Phase 2: a community wifi network to distribute the internet, the TVWS radios to carry the connection far, and solar Meshtastic nodes for local communication, even without internet.
August 7, 2026