Anacom wants PT Comunicações to review the conditions of the Reference Unbundling Offer (RUO), with the aim of improving the conditions for the collocation of alternative operators in telephone exchanges.
The regulator does not consider the refusal on the part of the incumbent operator to provide access to the plants valid for reasons of lack of space or energy constraints, «provided the operators have provided demand forecasts», a statement said.
In order to eliminate this type of situation, a set of principles are aligned, which in general order PTC to take a proactive action in resolving the main constraints to collocation by other operators and stipulates the possibility of passing these costs on to them. additional.
«These constraints occur essentially in terms of the availability of space in the rooms of PTC’s exchanges, in the distributors and in terms of the availability of energy to supply this equipment», states the statement.
The resolution clarifies that PTC is responsible for the dimensioning of energy needs, but adds that it can «if the operators have not installed meters in the collocation space, measure the actual consumption, passing on the cost to the operators». In this type of situation, all operators that use the possible increase in the power capacity of the plant must, during the period of one year, bear these costs in a shared manner, including companies of the PT group.
In order to resolve space issues in the central office rooms, the National Communications Authority determines that the incumbent must start to accept the installation of «half-modules», a measure that aims to make maximum use of the available capacity.
In situations where there is in fact no space, PTC must free up spaces / modules reserved by operators that have not been using them in the last three months, or that have had equipment deactivated in the last six months. In this case too, expanding the space – when none of the other solutions is viable – will have costs shared by the various beneficiary operators as far as their use is concerned.
The new measures aim to unblock situations that over the years of liberalization have concentrated criticism from PT’s competitors and in the perspective of the regulator itself have artificially halted the development of a more expressive number of direct offers alternative to PT.
In order for the new measures to work, it is necessary for alternative operators to provide PTC in advance with a «demand forecast plan, listing the exchanges where they plan to request unbundled access to the local loop, physical collocation and signal transport» among others elements, clarifies the regulator.
According to figures from the third quarter to the end of September, 172 thousand loops were unbundled, 18 percent more than in the previous quarter. In the same period, 192 telephone exchanges had co-installations.
PTC has 15 days to proceed with the changes imposed by the regulator.
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2005-09-23 – Anacom wants greater market predictability by anticipating conditions for 2006
