Preamble
1. Whereas:
a) since the end of 2007 the Government has taken on the development of next generation networks (NGN) as a policy priority and has launched a series of legal, regulatory and financial measures in order to promote the development of such networks, and has established a set of objective with respect to their development ;
b) in 2009 - and according to information compiled from time to time about this phenomenon - significant growth has been seen in these networks;
c) these networks will tend to become platforms in the context of which operators and users will interact, whereby it is incumbent on the regulator, as part of its statutory functions, inter alia, to guarantee that communications operators have access to networks, in conditions of transparency and equality, foster competition and development in communications markets, namely in the context of the convergence of communications, co-ordinate with the appropriate entity application of the law on competition in the communications sector;
d) new regulatory demands which, in this context, have appeared internationally, including at European Commission and CoCom level, and to which ICP-ANACOM must respond,
have made it necessary to begin collecting statistical indicators on a regular basis in relation to high-speed networks and services, in order to be able to accomplish the responsibilities of ICP-ANACOM, follow the deployment, extent of development and use of these networks and services and satisfy the demands that, both nationally and internationally, and within the scope of its responsibilities are made of ICP-ANACOM.
2. In this context, a new set of statistical data has been formulated, which is provided in annex.
In general, the intention is to collect indicators on cabled households and buildings, with data broken down by network configuration and by municipality, and data on clients broken down by market segment and municipality.
More specifically:
a) The indicators relating to cabled households and non-residential or mixed buildings allow determination of the level of development attained by such networks and the extent to which certain of the objectives set by the government in this area are being achieved;
b) The identification of the number of households/buildings cabled in partnership avoids duplicated accounting of the installed network;
c) The breakdown by network configuration is required because the various possible network configurations allow the potential provision of services with different characteristics, particularly in terms of transmission speed and its symmetry/asymmetry. For example, an offer based on FTTN + VDSL2+ will not potentially have the same characteristics and development as offers supported using HFC + EuroDOCSIS 3.0. Since these realities are not wholly comparable, any attempt a priori at breaking down the data might lead to a loss of information which is essential to achieving an understanding of how these networks are developing and to conducting an analysis these markets. ;
The network configurations indicated result from the questionnaire of CoCom - mentioned above - with the necessary adaptations to the Portuguese reality resulting from national regulations on the construction and installation of communications infrastructures in buildings and the reality of networks presently existing in Portugal;
d) The breakdown of information requested by Municipality will make it possible to monitor the deployment of these networks in Portugal over time, with a view to detecting potential market failures.
It is recalled in this connection that these networks are considered of strategic importance to promoting social and territorial cohesion and that it was concluded that allowing the market to function freely would not guarantee the establishment of these networks in all municipalities in the country;
e) Data on customers will enable verification of the intensity of network usage and assessment of the ease of access to the products supported on them;
f) A breakdown by market segment stems from the assertion that, at the level of access, the type of solutions and offer aimed at residential and non-residential customers have different characteristics, making it necessary to analyse the evolution of the segments separately and subsequently consider the possible existence of substitutability.
3. Operators/providers shall be required to send this information on a regular basis as from 3rd quarter 2010 (inclusive).
In cases where the information is not immediately available, operators / service providers are required to:
- submit estimates of the values in question, indicating the assumptions that were used for the calculation thereof;
- send the definitive information no later than the quarter following the closure of the company's accounts for the year to which the statistics refer.
After this date, the information given for the year in question shall be considered final. Any inaccuracies detected or reported after that date may be considered as a failure to comply with the obligations to submit information in accordance with current legislation.
4. Data collected in this respect may be published in aggregate form by ICP-ANACOM.
5. Under article 108 of Law No 5/2004 of 10 February and point f) of paragraph 1 of article 109 of the same law, the set of indicators in Annex shall be sent to ICP-ANACOM by operators of fixed networks and providers of the high-speed service no later than the thirtieth day following the end of each quarter using the Extranet and/or by e-mail to dee.stats@anacom.ptmailto:dee.stats@anacom.pt and/or on paper to:
ICP-ANACOM
DIE - Direcção de Informação e Estatística
Av. José Malhoa,
121099-017 Lisbon
Any clarifications needed may also be obtained using the above contact details.
