Anacom vetoed Portugal Telecom’s wholesale proposal for speeds above 1Mbps, following the announcement made last week by Miguel Horta e Costa, CEO of the group, which announced PT’s intention to accelerate the retail offer of 512 Kbps for 2Mbps, keeping the price.
According to the Jornal de NegĂłcios, the regulator considered that the adequate competitive conditions in the wholesale offer were not guaranteed, since the proposal wholesale presented by PT does not guarantee margin, compared to the retail offer.
According to the legislation in force (for 512 kbps) PT’s wholesale and retail offer must present a minimum safeguard margin, known as minus retail (retail minus) and currently stands at 20 per cent.
With the new proposal presented by the group, which intends to accelerate the offer of 512 kbps to 2Mbps, without changing prices, this rule is not guaranteed – in the wholesale offer – which, according to the regulator’s last analysis to the wholesale band market wide, it should happen.
In the analysis in question, on which only the draft decision is known, the regulator foresees the application of the retail rule minus to all debt categories. Taking this factor into account, the announcement of increasing speed while maintaining prices led to the suspension of the wholesale offer, considering that the remaining operators, with offers based on PT’s infrastructure, would not be able to compete properly.
Anacom’s determination that imposed a change by PT in its ADSL Network offer, increasing the category of debt available to the wholesale market, date of last year. According to this text, PT should «offer at least one class of local access with a speed equal to or greater than 2 Mbps downwards, specifically a class of 2 Mbps downwards and 512 Kbps upwards».
Miguel Horta e Costa announced at the end of last week that this year PT intends to extend the offer to the whole country of ADSL to 4 and 8 Mbps, ending the year at 20 Mbps. The move closely follows the intentions of other incumbent Europeans, such as Telefonica, which have responded to growing competition with new categories of debt and more affordable prices.
Related News:
2005-04-13 – Clix repositiones itself in the residential market and advances with 16 megs supply
2004-10-22 – Anacom reaffirms that PT Comunicações must move forward with wholesale ADSL offer at 2 Mbits
2004-09-03 – Anacom wants PT Comunicações to offer 2 Mbps ADSL speed
