APRITEL says telecommunications are not the target of a law on unfair competition

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APRITEL expressed in a statement some considerations about Decree-Law 57/2008 on unfair competition, which led to the publication of news about the taxation of mobile calls per second, with the limitation of rounding of calls.

In the opinion of the Association of Telecommunications Operators, the diploma is «aimed at other sectors of activity, not aiming to impose on electronic communications operators and consumers customers in the sector, any changes to the current commercial offers».

In order to end the speculation and doubts raised in the market over the past day, APRITEL stressed the impact that this sector has on the economy, as well as the significant advantages that the strong competition between operators has brought to the Portuguese consumer, namely through the different price plans offered by each company, all with «prices at the level of the best in Europe».

In the same statement, the association states that «the improvement of the offer has led operators to practice diversified, sophisticated and reduced charging units (minute followed by fractions of a minute, units for SMS or MMS, or Megabit, …), particularly if compared with practice in other sectors of activity «and that the tariffs in force are» transparent, widely disclosed to customers and known to them, giving rise to no doubts as to their duration and the final price to be paid «.

That said, APRITEL considers that «its Associates will continue […] to seek to enrich and refine its commercial offers and, in particular, its tariff models «and stresses that» the noise created about a hypothetical ban finds no basis in the directive now transposed «.

Yesterday, TeK had confirmed with the operators that no changes to the call charging system are foreseen as of April 1.

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2008-03-27 – Mobile operators do not confirm new call charges per second