In recent years, the strong dynamism of the Portuguese communications market has resulted in increasing uptake of the fixed and mobile broadband Internet access service and of the subscription television service. At the same time, there have been major structural changes, driven by a deterioration in economic conditions and significant technological developments.
Meanwhile, over the last three years, the Portuguese market has been the scene of a series of important mergers and acquisitions. After the merger between ZON and Optimus (which created NOS Comunicações) and the purchase of Onitelecom by Grupo Altice (which already controlled Cabovisão), in 2015, Grupo PT was acquired by Grupo Altice, with a commitment that Altice divest its other subsidiaries (Cabovisão and Oni).
These movements in the market have created conditions which accelerate convergence, especially between mobile and fixed infrastructure. As a result, a new dynamic has been instilled in the sector, with the strengthening of convergent offers and enabling the appearance of quadruple-play and quintuple-play bundles comprising mobile and fixed voice products, mobile and fixed broadband Internet, and subscription television. This has resulted in increased competition, which in turn has driven the appearance of offerings with increasingly competitive pricing, bringing benefits to consumers.
Portugal has high combined coverage of next generation access networks (NGA), which enable download speeds equal to or greater than 30 Mbps (89.1% of homes in 2014), whereas, in terms of mobile broadband, Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks provides coverage to 94.2% of homes (2014). These figures mean that Portugal is one of the European countries with the highest levels broadband network coverage.
The availability of these networks has driven the offer of bundles of different services and enabled new businesses such as cloud computing, representing a tangible business opportunity for telecom companies.
In the postal sector, the digitization of the economy and competition from electronic communications continue to have an impact. Overall traffic volumes continue to decline (falling 4.4% in 2014), largely due to the sustained substitution of traditional postage by electronic communications. Meanwhile, areas associated with e-commerce, such as express mail and parcel traffic, despite reporting growth, are not yet large enough to compensate for the reduction in traditional businesses.
These pressures have led postal operators to seek new areas of activity and new opportunities for growth not currently offered by the Portuguese market, specifically through internationalisation and with the development of electronic commerce.
In this context, ANACOM will continue, with every effort, to create the right regulatory environment, so that the communications sector can continue to develop. This Plan is intended as an instrument in accomplishing this environment.
