On the sidelines of the opening session of the 16th APDC Congress, Secretary of State for Communications, Paulo Campos, said that the Government will proceed immediately with a public consultation for the attribution of a new Digital Terrestrial Television license before starting the tender process. itself, which should happen only in the first quarter of 2007. Paulo Campos also stated that the Government wants Portugal to be at the forefront on Mobile TV.
After withdrawing the Digital Terrestrial Television operating license, which had been granted to PTDP in 2001, the Government has already promised on several occasions to proceed with a new tender, but the lack of global technical conditions to do so was recognized.
Now it seems that the contest will really start, having been considered “very important” by the secretary of state who advances the two types of license. «The project that we are going to submit to public consultation has a license to issue free TV and a pay TV broadcast «, he says.
It is recalled that just last week the head of the DTT area at Anacom gave an interview to Jornal de Negócios where he revealed that there are 10 entities interested in the Digital Terrestrial Television license. Among them are PT, Sonaecom, AR Telecom, the French TDF, Retevisión, RTP, Impresa, Media Capital, Cofina and Controlinveste, wrote the newspaper.
Portugal at the forefront on Mobile TV Still on the sidelines of the opening session, Paulo Campos revealed that the Government is “in talks with a number of operators and infrastructure producers in the area of Mobile TV, and that it wants to put Portugal at the forefront in this sector.
For now, a working group will be created that aims to capture interests since the Secretary of State admits that this initiative can bring international companies to the Portuguese market.
The opening of the 16th Communications Congress was also marked by the message of Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for the Information Society, who called for initiatives to help increase the rates of research and development in the country, but also praised the prices of band services the Portuguese market and Anacom’s efforts to regulate the local loop.
Viviane Reding also spoke about the priorities of the 2006 Review, launched this year, underlining that «it is not an objective to change the basic principles of the regulatory framework for Electronic Communications», but rather to simplify mechanisms, such as the analysis and definition of relevant markets, or clarify issues such as technological neutrality and services, which will allow the use of any technology and provide any service in a given range of spectrum.
Editorial note: The news was updated with information about the presentation by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner.
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2001-08-20 – PTDP Consortium wins Digital Terrestrial Television license
