As referred earlier and in the "market analysis", it is fundamental to ensure that supply and fault repair times that apply to the wholesale supply of leased lines by PTC do not prevent competing operators from providing their customers with supply and fault repair times similar to those practised by the Grupo PT. In this context, it should be highlighted that one of the beneficiaries of LLRO informed ICP-ANACOM that it has unsuccessfully urged PTC to submit a proposal for more demanding levels of service than those defined in the LLRO1.
To analyse this issue it is relevant to take account of conditions, among others, provided by the Grupo PT, specifically by PTC to PT Prime, which enable the latter to provide data services at retail level, namely the service "Prime Link - Premium Class" which covers two types of solutions2:
(a) Premium lines;
(b) Premium Plus lines.
Among the characteristics of this service, PT Prime identified "requirements of quality of service above average standards established for common lines", guaranteeing a quality of service "by means of a high and progressive compensation" to the client.
Consideration should also be given to the fact that there are clients and services with different needs in terms of availability and service restore times, and on the less demanding should not be placed an unnecessary burden, thus the introduction of Premium services in wholesale services and, specifically in the LLRO, could be regarded as appropriate to meet the various market requirements.
In should also be stressed that, in the perspective of ERG, different levels of service should be available, to reflect differences in customer demand, and differences in charges for different levels of service should be objectively justifiable. ERG takes the view that, in justified cases, NRAs may also consider the imposition of a tighter form of non-discrimination obligation such as "equivalence of input" conditions to ensure that the conditions provided to OSP are as similar as possible to those faced by the SMP operator’s own downstream business.
Further to the information request sent to PTC and to the analysis of the respective response, it must be concluded that Premium conditions provided by (ex-)PT Prime at retail level, namely at the level of quality of service, may be technically replicated by OSP in the scope of the LLRO. However, the received information does not allow this matter to be examined exhaustively in terms of commercial conditions applicable to these Premium services, which will be carried out in separate.
Without prejudice to future evaluations, and where the possibility of economic replication is confirmed, it is deemed that the identification in the scope of LLRO of more demanding Premium service classes or levels of service than those established currently in the present document is not required.
1 PTC responded to this that:
(a) submitting such a proposal would require a study estimated in more than 30 thousand Euro;
(b) the deadline for submitting the proposal would be 30 working days from acceptance of the mentioned budget;
(c) carrying out the study did not immediately guarantee the possibility of implementing a Premium SLA, along the lines requested.
2 Vide: Prime Link - Classe Premiumhttp://62.48.147.70/PTPrime/Homepage/ProdutosServicos/DetalheProduto/?IdProd=43&Familia=Networking%20e%20IP&Classe=Prime%20Link&IdFamilia=2&IdClas=86.
