The Instituto das Comunicações de Portugal (ICP) has approved a draft decision establishing the compensation payable by PT Comunicações, Portugal's historic operator, to the other operators in the event of non-compliance with service quality goals. The operators in question have ten days to express an opinion regarding this draft decision.
The service quality goals are understood to be a set of completion dates to be met by PT Comunicações when providing other operators with local loop access. These completion dates were established by ICP last June.
The local loop is understood to be the final stretch of the telecommunications network operated by PT Comunicações, which has been opened to use by the other operators.
These penalties are intended to stimulate the historic operator to meet the completion dates established for the provision of services, helping to increase competition in the fixed communications market and to bring benefits to consumers.
The penalties, payable by PT Comunicações to other operators, are calculated on the basis of the loss to the other operators caused by non-compliance by PT Comunicações with its service quality obligations.
The calculation involves variables such as the type of service overdue, the average length of the delay in days, the average number of customers per day and per exchange expected for each operator within the scope of the local loop offer or the size of the exchange in question, among others.
The maximum limit to the penalties is the price of the service, per operator and per loop, in cases of non-compliance with indicators for the local loop access service and 20% of the price in cases on non-compliance with the indicators for the co-location and signal transport services.
The amounts to be charged, calculated on a case-by-case basis, can therefore vary considerably. By way of example, the penalty can be as low as EUR 7.50 (1,503$00) in the case of a one-day delay to the supply of a loop or as much as EUR 4,291.46 (860,360$00) in the case of a delay to the provision of an external 600-pair copper wire, per exchange and per operator.
The quality objectives (provision of service dates) that underpin these penalties and the sums involved may be revised by ICP.
Consult:
- Compensations for failure to comply with the deadlines defined within the framework of unbundled access to the local loop https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=417388
