Altice to challenge regulator order to cut digital TV prices by 15%

  • Lusa
  • 29 January 2019

Anacom's decision, which determined a 15.16% reduction of prices for TV prices, will be challenged by Altice, which owns MEO, Portugal's leading telecommunications and broadband provider.

Altice Portugal on Tuesday announced that it is to challenge a decision by the regulator for the telecommunications sector, Anacom, determining a 15.16% reduction of the prices for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).

In a statement, Altice – which owns MEO, Portugal’s leading telecommunications and broadband provider – says that “this price reduction lacks legal, technical, economic grounds” and that it jeopardises the future of the DTT “to the detriment of all users”.

There is, it states, “no other alternative but to challenge the regulator’s decision.” Anacom’s decision was made public in November 2018.

At the time, it announced that it had decided “to order MEO to apply the annual price for the service of carrying and broadcasting the TDT signal of 885,100 euros per Mbps [megabits per second], which corresponds to a reduction of 15.16% in the annual prices per Mbps that MEO charges to television operators (RTP, SIC and TVI) for the provision of the DTT service.”

The regulator said that the decision had resulted from an assessment that “concluded that the prices currently in force, and which were agreed between the company and the television operators, do not observe one of the principles introduced by Law No. 33/2016, of August 24th, as they exceed the price limit presented in the tender that won the public invitation to award the right to use frequencies.”

At the time, Altice expressed “its total opposition” to the decision, which it said was “unfair, unfounded and with a negative impact on the future of the TDT in Portugal”. It accused the regulator of “acting in an unconsidered manner and promoting the decline and degradation of DTT”.