ANACOM imposed on MEO - Serviços de Comunicações e Multimédia (MEO) a fine amounting to EUR 630 000 for failing to comply with the coverage and quality requirements of the digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTT) service to which it was bound in the municipality of Castelo de Paiva between 2 October 2015 and 2 February 2016. The case also showed that MEO did not indicate, through its website available for this purpose, correct information on the coverage it provided in the location where ANACOM’s probe was installed (Fornos Town Council) and, furthermore, that it did not ensure, as far as some monitored points in the aforementioned municipality are concerned, that users of that service had the necessary information to best access the DTT signal, by indicating the best-server.
MEO lodged an appeal against this decision, adopted on 25 November 2021, and Tribunal da Concorrência Regulação e Supervisão (TCRS - the Competition Regulatory and Supervisory Court), in a judgment issued on 6 June 2022, broadly confirmed ANACOM’s decision, while partially upholding the appeal filed by the company, condemning it for the practice of the same facts and its misconduct, and reducing the amount of the fine imposed to EUR 430 000.
MEO’s actions were harmful to the right to an essential and free service, whose availability must be stable for all users. The violation of obligations to which it is subject, in terms of DTT coverage, may affect a range of thousands of users, and, as referred by TCRS, in a context of economic and financial hardship, will tend to affect people and families with fewer resources.
The deadline for the appeal to the Lisbon Court of Appeal against this sentence is currently underway.
