At the request of the Government and within the scope of its assigned responsibilities in providing assistance to the Government, ANACOM is promoting a public consultation on the deployment of very high capacity public electronic communications networks in ‘target areas’ using public funding, particularly funding from the European Union.
This is the third public consultation launched on the identification of ‘target areas’, the first one having been launched in January, and the second in October with a more accurate identification of ‘white areas’, based on coverage information with a granularity at address level (where each address corresponds to a single building). In this third consultation, the algorithm for determining the ‘target areas’ was significantly improved, taking into account both the contributions received from the previous consultations and the search for an optimal solution that would meet the defined basic criteria more efficiently.
In total, 37 173 statistical subsections have now been identified as ‘target areas’, spread over 1837 parishes in 283 municipalities across the country. A total of 455 thousand buildings are covered, corresponding to around 474 thousand dwellings1 and buildings related to industrial, commercial or agricultural facilities.
It should be noted that ‘target areas’ can be deemed to cover only areas where no high capacity network exists or is planned to be installed within the relevant time horizon, or, where only one network exists, it covers no more than 10% of the dwellings in the area.
The public consultation now launched aims to obtain input from all interested parties, namely network operators and electronic communications service providers, on possible future investment plans - for a relevant time horizon of 6 (six) years - in very high-capacity electronic communications networks in ‘target areas’ identified herein (geographical areas where such networks are not currently available).
For this purpose, the following elements have been made available:
- Digital map showing identified 'target areas'https://anacom.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=a96d367dc80845d094babf078104a327
List of sub-sections identified as 'target areas'
Interested parties may send their written contributions, in Portuguese, until 12 March 2023, preferably by email to concurso.areasbrancas@anacom.pt, without prejudice to the possibility of sending them by post to ANACOM’s head office at Rua Ramalho Ortigão, 51, 1099-099 Lisbon.
Once the consultation has been concluded, ANACOM will prepare a report with a summary of contributions received, which it will present to the Government and make public on its website. When publishing the results of the consultation, ANACOM will safeguard the confidentiality of items duly identified and substantiated by respondents as being confidential.
ANACOM provides on its website an interactive maphttps://anacom.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=a96d367dc80845d094babf078104a327 with the geographical representation of the identified ‘target areas’ (see Fig. 1).
Video tutorial for viewing the Interactive Map
Figure 1 – Interactive map for searching and viewing “white areas”
