It is hereby made public, in accordance with the conditions and for the purposes set out in paragraph 1 of article 98 of the Administrative Procedure Code, that the Board of Directors of Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM), within the scope of the powers provided for in points a), c), d), f) and h) of paragraph 1 of article 8 of ANACOM’s Statutes, approved by Decree-Law No 39/2015, of 16 March, in pursuit of the general objectives set out in points a), b) and c) of paragraph 1 of article 5 and pursuant to points a) to f) of paragraph 2 of article 51, paragraph 1 of article 54, paragraphs 1 to 3 and 6 of article 55 and pursuant to articles 56 and 57, all of the Electronic Communications Law (ECL), approved by Law No 16/2022 of 16 August, in the exercise of the powers conferred in paragraph 1 of article 10 of Law No 16/2022, of 16 August, in point a) of paragraph 2 of article 9 and in article 10 of ANACOM’s Statutes and of the competence conferred in point b) of paragraph 1 of article 26 of the Statutes, decided, on 29 May 2024, to open the procedure to amend Regulation No 532/2023, of 16 May, which approves the Regulation on the designation of the “49” range of the National Numbering Plan (NNP).
The purpose of this regulatory procedure is to revise the time limit laid down in paragraph 2 of article 5 of the abovementioned Regulation, which provides that “[c]ompanies providing services identified in article 1 of the Regulation adopted in the annex using NNP numbers shall assign numbers exclusively in the range “49” within the framework of such offers as from the date of commencement of their secondary assignment, by themselves or by a beneficiary to whom they have sub-assigned such numbers, and in any case within 18 months of the entry into force of this Regulation”.
A phasing-out period is also to be provided for, at the end of the previous implementation period, to allow the coexistence of secondary assignment of numbers in the “9x” and “49” ranges for the provision of the services covered by the Regulation, to ensure the disposal of SIM cards made available/supplied by operators to points of sale and to minimise the waste and environmental impact of the destruction of SIM cards in the various sales channels.
The revision of the deadline provided for in paragraph 2 of article 5 of the Regulation and the introduction of the phasing-out period are the result of an analysis of a request submitted by APRITEL - Associação dos Operadores de Comunicações Eletrónicas1 to this effect, in which the following reasons were put forward:
- The existence of additional impacts that were not identified or could not be identified by operators during the consultation phase of the draft Regulation;
- The increased complexity of the systems and processes involved in the introduction of the new numbering range, which has meant that resources, analysis time, effort estimates and the number of applications affected have been greater than anticipated by operators;
- The impact on the systems and processes of the different consumer segments affects a large proportion of end-users, as the electronic communications services covered by the changes promoted by the Regulation include not only the services identified therein, but also the bundled offers that may include these services;
- The full implementation of the Regulation and the guarantee of continuity of service do not depend solely on developments by the electronic communications operators providing the services covered by the Regulation, but may require action by various stakeholders, including customers, partners, equipment suppliers, international operators and other entities with access to the numbering resources concerned;
- The need to carry out interoperability tests between companies and between them and the various stakeholders, which requires the involvement and coordination of different teams from different companies, requiring coordination efforts and the need to correct errors and repeat tests.
Having examined the information provided by APRITEL, ANACOM considers that it is plausible that the extension of the deadline provided for in paragraph 2 of article 5 of the Regulation will not have a significant negative impact, given that the companies providing the services will be able to continue to use other number ranges for this purpose. The evidence available to ANACOM therefore suggests that this extension will not be detrimental to end-users, who will be able to continue to use the services without any significant restrictions. It is also considered plausible that providing for a phasing-out period could have positive effects, in particular by allowing companies to dispose of SIM cards already produced and distributed by commercial networks, while reducing the environmental impact associated with the destruction of SIM cards.
In this context, ANACOM's Board of Directors has decided to set a deadline of 10 working days from the date of this notice for interested parties to submit the contributions they consider should be taken into account when drawing up the draft amendment to the aforementioned Regulation with regard to the two aspects in question.
Therefore, contributions in Portuguese may be sent to ANACOM within 10 working days of the date of this notice, to the address regulamento.m2m@anacom.ptmailto:regulamento.m2m@anacom.pt, indicating the elements considered confidential, in which case a redacted version must be sent. Contributions may be submitted until 20 June 2024.
ANACOM will analyse the contributions received and take them into account in the preparation of the draft amendment to the Regulation, on which interested parties will be able to comment when it is submitted to the regulatory and public consultation procedure, in accordance with article 10 of ANACOM’s Statutes and article 10 of the ECL, through publication on ANACOM’s institutional website (www.anacom.pthttps://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=2958) and in Series II of the Official Gazette.
Lisbon, 29 May 2024.
1 On behalf of its associates, http://www.apritel.org/associates/http://www.apritel.org/associates/.
Consult:
- Approval of the opening of the regulatory procedure to amend Regulation No 532/2023 of 16 May, which approves the Regulation on the designation of the "49" range of the National Numbering Plan https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1788633
