By letter sent to ANACOM on 18 December 2014, the then PT Comunicações, S.A. (PTC) and MEO - Serviços de Comunicações e Multimédia, S.A. (formerly TMN - Telecomunicações Móveis Nacionais, S.A. (TMN)) informed ANACOM that, on 21 November 2014, the two companies had submitted an application for registration of the plan for the merger by means of acquisition of MEO into PTC to the competent Commercial Register, the necessary authorization having been requested on the same date also from the Minister for Economy1.
The company stressed that the merger registration implied “MEO’s formal winding up, all its rights and obligations being transferred, under the law, to PTC’s legal sphere, in particular the ones that result from titles enabling the exercise of electronic communication sector activities, titles assigning rights of use for numbers and codes of the National Numbering Plan (…)”.
PTC thus requested ANACOM to take all appropriate steps to formalise the required changes, taking into account that “as a result of the merger, PTC has taken over all rights of use of numbering resources formerly allocated to MEO and corresponding obligations, stemming from conditions established under the law and/or imposed by the Regulatory Authority in the respective assignment titles”.
As regards the right of use for numbers corresponding to the company code (D096CCC) assigned to MEO, which integrates the Network Routing Number (NRN), PTC informed that “the technical aspects and possible economic impact related to the potential removal of situations where there could be some overlap between numbering resources was still under examination”.
The company informed also that “given the existence of two different public electronic communication networks (fixed and mobile)”, “the company wishes to maintain in its legal sphere the coexistence of NRN codes currently held (020 and 096), first of all in order to allow an adequate call routing for portability purposes”.
Acknowledging “that numbering resources are scarce and that there may be overlap situations that may result in surplus resources in the sphere of a sole company”, PTC offered to analyse and define, together with ANACOM, the best way to remove such overlap situations.
Subsequently, by letter received on 2 January 2015, MEO further communicated to this Authority that, in 29 December 2014, it had registered MEO’s merger by means of acquisition into PTC, “taking into account the authorizations granted by the Minister for Economy”.
It informed also in the referred communication, “for the purpose of paragraphs 1 and 6 of article 21 and article 22 of the Electronic Communications Law, and in order to fulfil the obligation agreed upon under point g) of paragraph 4 of Clause 7, both of the contract for the provision of the Universal Service Public Pay-Phone Offering, and of the contract for the provision of the Universal Service of a comprehensive telephone directory and directory enquiry service, concluded on 20 February 2014 with the Portuguese State, that, together with the registration of the merger, PT Comunicações also registered the change of the respective corporate name, having been renamed, on 29 December 2014, «MEO - Serviços de Comunicações e Multimédia, S.A.» and having changed its headquarters to Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo, No. 40, 1069-300 Lisbon.”
Recently, MEO - Serviços de Comunicações e Multimédia, S.A. (formerly PT Comunicações, S.A.), by letter received on 23 March 2018, communicated the termination of its Short Message Service - SMS - over the fixed network, having applied, for this purpose, for the return of the “02” Mobile Network Code (MNC), which had been allocated by ANACOM for the provision of the referred service, with effect as from 16 April 2018.
1 Having brought this notification to the notice of ANACOM through a copy attached to the letter sent to this Authority.
