After the political and social changes resulting from the creation of the State of East Timor, it has been a priority of the Portuguese government to promote the most appropriate means for the pursuit of a policy of bilateral cooperation, through a process of sectoral cooperation which aims to respond to the urgent needs of a country newly emerged from a serious conflict and with major infrastructure deficiencies.
The communications sector was considered, in a first stage, as one of the pillars of the project of reconstructing the social structures, especially when in November 2000, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed on cooperation in the fields of public works, housing, transport and communications. Under this memorandum, five work training programmes were conducted in Portugal in 2001, organized and run by ANACOM.
Over the years following the implementation, in 2003, of ARCOM - Autoridade Reguladora das Comunicações (Communications Regulatory Authority), about two dozen technicians and managers from the East Timorese regulator have attended ANACOM training courses.
In 2008, a project of additional training in Portuguese was initiated for the technicians of ARCOM, promoted in partnership with IPAD (Portuguese Institute for the Support of Development), as part of the project of training in Portuguese which the Institute was running in East Timor, whereby ARCOM technicians could receive free training in Portuguese.
