ANACOM has decided to impose fines totalling more than EUR 465,000 on the four main electronic communications operators - MEO, NOS, Vodafone and NOWO - for having adopted internal guidelines and procedures which, when applied by their employees, were likely to breach, and in the case of MEO actually did breach, the legal provisions applicable to the selective barring of communications provided for in article 45 of Law No 5/2004 of 10 February (ECL).
NOS was fined EUR 75,000, Vodafone EUR 250,000, MEO EUR 80,000 and NOWO EUR 60,000.
The administrative offence proceedings against NOS, MEO and Vodafone concern the issue of internal guidelines and the definition of procedures to prevent, in the case of bar lifting requests made by text message, selective access to value-added services (VAS) involving the sending of more than one text message or the sending of texts on a continuous basis (numbering range 62) and texts with an erotic or sexual content (numbering range 69), on the basis of numbering ranges, leading instead to the lifting of the bar on all VAS.
MEO’s administrative offence proceedings also cover situations where the barring of VAS requiring the sending of more than one text or the sending of texts on a continuous basis and with erotic or sexual content has been lifted without the request of the users of the mobile telephone service concerned.
In addition to the fines, NOS and Vodafone were also ordered to amend the internal guidelines issued and the procedure put in place, in order to allow selective access to VAS in the case of bar lifting requests made by text message. MEO amended these guidelines after being notified of ANACOM’s charges.
The administrative offence proceedings against NOWO concern the issue of internal guidelines and the establishment of procedures that prevented its subscribers from accessing VAS and audiotext services via the mobile telephone service. The company failed to guarantee the right of users to access the numbering resources of the national numbering plan related to these services, although it is now doing so, since May 2023.
The rules on selective barring of communications set out in article 45 of the ECL aim to protect the interests and rights of subscribers and users of message-based value-added services, as the more vulnerable party to the contract, in order to ensure that access to such services corresponds to their actual wishes and that access is only debarred to the services that the subscriber wants.
NOS, MEO and NOWO have already lodged an appeal against ANACOM’s decision, and Vodafone’s deadline to appeal has not yet expired.
