The European Commission did not raise any reservations with respect to the draft decisions notified by ANACOM regarding the analyses of the relevant markets, validating ANACOM's decision to impose a set of obligations on MEO, including the obligation to open its optical fibre network to other operators in a designated set of parishes.
With the European Commission's response to the notification on the draft decisions relating to relevant markets, this process is concluded, and the obligations determined by ANACOM will be applied.
With regard to the market for wholesale fixed access at a fixed location, ANACOM will impose a regulatory obligation on the companies of Altice Portugal, requiring access to their fibre network in 402 parishes lacking effective competition. The company is also required to provide a wholesale offer of unbundled access to the optical fibre loop (ODF unbundling) through provision of a PON offer and subject to an obligation to grant access to fibre at a regional/local level (fibre bitstream offer). Under this offer, connectivity will be made available to the alternative operator between the aggregated access terminal point and the local access terminal point, with configurable speeds of up to 1 Gbps.
The wholesale offers providing access to the optical fibre network of the companies of Grupo Altice in the 402 identified parishes will be associated with an obligation of fair and reasonable pricing. This will allow operators to design retail offers and offer their end customers profit-based retail services which are typically available in the rest of the country.
These wholesale offers must be defined by MEO and made available to potential beneficiaries and ANACOM no later than six months following the date of this decision's approval. The parties then have a period of one month to comment. After these periods have concluded, the offers must be published and made available.
In the remaining analysed markets: physical infrastructures market; wholesale central access market at a fixed location; wholesale market for access to dedicated capacity; and market relating to the trunk segments of wholesale leased lines (specifically the market for CAM and Inter-Island circuits), the companies of Altice Portugal are identified, in most cases, as having significant market power (SMP). This designation means that Altice Portugal holds an economic position that allows it, to a large extent, to act independently of its competitors, its customers and consumers in general, and to their potential detriment. In order to address this dominant position, ANACOM imposes a set of appropriate and proportional obligations, with the aim of supporting the emergence of competitive markets that work to the benefit of citizens and consumers.
Among the obligations imposed on the companies of Grupo Altice in these markets is the obligation to provide a reference offer for access to posts (ORAP) and a reference offer for access to ducts (ORAC) throughout the national territory. The ability of alternative operators to use the posts and ducts of the companies of Grupo Altice to build their own networks has been an important factor in the development of high-capacity Internet networks across the country, and it has been key in supporting sustained and vigorous competition that allows operators present in the market to maintain a high level of autonomy.
However, regulating access to MEO's physical infrastructure, especially posts and ducts, did not prove to be sufficient to promote competition in some areas of the country. In these areas, the construction of very high-capacity networks competing with the companies of Grupo Altice did not take occur, demonstrating the existence of barriers that must be removed. This led to ANACOM deciding that the companies of Grupo Altice should be made subject to the regulatory obligation to allow access to their optical fibre network in 402 parishes (Figure 1) where there is a lack of effective competition and where effective competition is unlikely to develop over a relevant time horizon.
The maintenance of other wholesale reference offers made available by MEO in 2,020 Portuguese parishes is also relevant, given the importance of these offers to the objectives of promoting competition, particularly in the context of very high-capacity networks and the provision of services over these networks. These reference offers include terminal segments of Ethernet circuits (RELLO) and the Ethernet connectivity offer (OCE), the latter reformulated to allow the possibility of point-to-multipoint optical fibre support.
Equally important, and with a key role in promoting territorial cohesion between Mainland Portugal and the Autonomous Regions of the Azores and Madeira, access to capacity in the CAM and Inter-island submarine cable systems of Altice Portugal remains subject to ex ante regulation, incorporating Fibroglobal's inter-island submarine cable system into the scope of the regulated offer and reformulating the methodology of assessing pricing, which should be cost-oriented.
Finally, developments in these markets show that the copper network, owned by MEO/Altice, has been losing relevance, particularly given the developments that have occurred in terms of very high-capacity networks, so that the imposition of certain regulatory obligations aimed at making the copper network available is no longer justified. In this context, following a 24-month transition period, the availability of the Rede ADSL PT Reference Offer, the Reference Unbundling Offer (RUO) and the Leased lines Reference Offer (LLRO) will cease to be an obligation.
Figure 1 - Parishes which lack effective competition and where an obligation is to be imposed on Altice to provide access its optical fibre network 
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Consult:
- Approval of the decision on the analysis of the market for wholesale access to dedicated capacity https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1771463
- Approval of the decision on the analysis of electronic communications markets for leased lines trunk segments https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1771484
- Approval of the decision on the analysis of the markets of access to physical infrastructures, wholesale local access at a fixed location and wholesale central access at a fixed location https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1771453
