ANACOM participated in the eight meeting of the Atlantic Island Regions, held last 21-25 May on Bubaque Island in Guinea-Bissau, this year organised by that country’s Autoridade Reguladora Nacional das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (ARN-TIC). The event was attended by delegations from Portugal (ANACOM), Cabo Verde (ANAC) and São Tomé and Príncipe (AGER). Timor-Leste and Equatorial Guinea were notably invited to take part for the first time but were unable to attend due to scheduling reasons.
The meeting was mainly meant to debate the platform for exchanging experience and knowledge among the island regions’ NRAs in the framework of partnership and development in the communications sector.
The work began with a visit by the delegations to the offices of ARN-TIC, including the service quality control and spectrum management equipment rooms and to the mobile radio monitoring station.
The following stand out among the issues considered:
- spectrum management, specifically station licensing and support database, satellite services station licensing, technological neutrality, frequency refarming and future spectrum sharing trends;
- equipment and methods used to gauge mobile service quality, highlighting the models used in Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau as well as ANACOM’s NET.mede tool;
- presentation of the ANACOM Consumer Portal, a portal accessible by consumers in general, specifically to answer questions, obtain information about conflict resolution and submit claims;
- implementation of the systems governing telecommunication infrastructures in buildings (ITED) and in housing estates, urban developments and groups of buildings in dispersed (such as insular) environments.
This meeting also served to sign bilateral cooperation protocols between ARN-TIC and ANACOM, ARN-TIC and AGER, and ARN-TIC and ANAC.
The visit culminated with a joint statement to the press by the chairs of the boards of directors of ARN-TIC, Abdú Jaquité, ANACOM, João Cadete de Matos, AGER, Cândido Frota, and the managing director of ANAC, João Gomes.
The head of ANACOM expressed interest in hosting the ninth Atlantic Island Regions meeting in Madeira in 2019.
