Draft Decision reffering to plans of prices ?PT Network Line without Subscription?
1. By official Communication of 20/1/02, ANACOM suspended the PT Comunicações S.A. (PTC)’s offer called “PT Network Line without Subscription” (see: Suspension of PT Comunicações offer ''PT Network Line without Subscription'' - decision of 17.1.2003https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=418314).
2. It is a fixed telephone service offer modality in which, according to PTC, replaces “the traditional tariff of subscription of the network line by a guaranteed monthly expenditure, convertible in traffic”, consolidating the possibility of an aggregate sale of access and traffic.
3. These plans of prices (option 1 and option 2), meant for the national communications with fixed or mobile destination, are characterized, in particular, by the existence of a minimum monthly expenditure of €21,01, IVA excluded - entirely convertible in traffic – and by a one only tariff for the local, regional and national calls.
4. Pursuant to subsection a) of paragraph 1 of the article 8 of the Decree Law nr. 415/98, of 31/12, PT Comunicações, S.A., in its capacity as entity with significant market power, is committed to comply with non-discrimination principle in the interconnection offer, which is translated, namely, in its obligation to offer the conditions and information that applies to its own services, subsidiaries or associates to the interconnection applicants that offer similar services and that are in similar conditions – nr. 2 of the same article 8.
5. Furthermore, paragraph 2 of article 33 of the Regulations for the Operation of the Fixed Telephone Service, approved by Decree-Law no. 474/99, of November 8th, requires the operators with significant market power the duty of providing access conditions to the network, similar (to the ones that they have or to the ones that the respective subsidiary or associate companies use) to all entities that provide similar services and that are in equal circumstances.
6. The new telephone fixed service providers, whose admission in the market is facilitated by indirect access, do not have the possibility, in this modality of service providing, to materialize similar offer. Up to the present date, it is PTC that, only and exclusively, invoices and charges the price of subscription to its own direct customers, therefore, if a network line subscription wholesale offer doesn’t exist, the new operators who provide the service in indirect access way, do not have the possibility to aggregate, in the same offer, the subscription and the traffic, thus, becoming unable to compete with that company in competitive conditions.
7. NOVIS TELECOM, S.A. presented to ANACOM an exposition relating to this offer where it complains against the respective start-up, considering it seriously adverse to the telephone fixed service providers, which are alternatives to the historic operator.
8. Thus, considering that:
i) PT Comunicações, S.A., has significant market power in the interconnection market and in the fixed telephone network market and or fixed telephone service;
ii) The quoted entity, does not offer to the rest of the operators the possibility to aggregate the subscription and the traffic, pursuant to subsection a) of paragraph 1 of article 8 of the Decree Law nr. 415/98, of 31/12 and pursuant to nr. 2 of the article 33 of the Regulation for the Operation of the Fixed Telephone Service, approved by the Decree Law nr. 474/99, of 8/11;
iii) The operators who provide the service in indirect access do not have the possibility to realize offers that compete with the “PT Network Line without Subscription” offer and that such fact constitutes an obstacle to these operators development and their admission in the market;
iv) There was a serious risk that the offer of PT Comunicações, S.A. would cause serious damage to the competition ANACOM, in an official communication of 20/01/02, suspended temporarily the offer “PT Network Line without Subscription”.
The Board of Directors of ANACOM, in an usual meeting of 10/04/2003, deliberated to keep the suspension on the “PT Network Line without Subscription” offer, for as long as the causes invoked for its suspension remain valid, in other words, until PTC offers to the remaining operators the possibility to present offers of the same kind.
