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Louveira
258
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 06-07-08/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
"Big" Ronaldo at the
base of the mast for his
5-meter dish. One of
his 2.8-meter antennas
can be seen in the
background to the left.
If you live in a city that’s named Lou-
veira, you’ll quickly come across ambig-
uous names. For “Big” Ronaldo Zovaro
it was clear that one of his companies
that sells amateur radio equipment
would get the domain name www.lou-
vetel.com.br. But we couldn’t quite un-
derstand the reason behind giving his
second company, a wireless Internet
provider, the domain name www.pignet.
com.br. Of course, it’s much more im-
portant that he’s a satellite enthusiast.
His property is full of every kind of
dish. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have all
that much time anymore to play around
with his hobby. “My company Pignet
employs 15 people,” he explains to us
during a visit to his company in Louvei-
ra, a city of 37,000 people in the São
Paulo province in southeastern Brazil.
You can’t miss his main office: in ad-
dition to a large 5-meter satellite dish
there are two masts that streak towards
the sky. These masts carry the trans-
mitting antennas for his wireless Inter-
net service that his company offers.
“Besides these two master transmit-
ters, we also operate 30 additional re-
peaters throughout the city”, Big Ronal-
do explains to us regarding his business.
“This allows us to reach more than 90%
of all the people in Louveira. We install
roughly 50 reception systems every
month; at the moment we have about
2000 customers that use our service.”
Transmissions take place in the 2.4
and 5.8 GHz ranges and customers can
access his Internet service within a radi-
us of about 1km from each of the trans-
mission antennas. “Our service costs 50
Real per month with a one-time instal-
lation cost of 180 Real”, says Ronaldo.
Ronaldo is an enthusiastic satellite
hobbyist. He installed his first dish in
2002: “It was a 1.6-meter antenna”,
remembers Ronaldo. Additional dishes
were not far behind: his big dish is a
5-meter monster that he erected with
an actuator motor.
Most of the time he has this dish
pointed to SATMEX 5 at 116° west.
“This is real DX reception here in south-
ern Brazil since this satellite’s elevation
is just 9°”, adds Ronaldo as he refers to
“Big”
Ronaldo’s
Two Companies
COMPANY REPORT
Wireless Internet Provider Pignet, São Paulo, Brazil