Altice Portugal rejects regulator’s DTT pricing claims
November 13, 2020
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Altice Portugal has rejected claims by the National Communications Authority (Anacom) over the price the operator requested for the migration of the DTT network from the 700 MHz band.
Last week, the president of Anacom said that the operation would cost less than €4 million, “substantially lower than the cost that Altice had proposed at the beginning, in the order of €25 million”.
According to Altice Portugal, the value mentioned by Anacom as the operator’s proposal “does not correspond at all to the reality of the facts”.
It said that the regulator ordered a study from LS Telecom on the expansion of the DTT offer that estimated a cost of €21 million for simulcasting and the simultaneous migration from DVB-T to DVB-T2 to increase the number of TV channels from 9 to 20-25.
The operator claims its price estimate of April 2019, amounting to €8.4 million, did not include the costs for simulcasting but only those related to the network and call centre component.
Altice Portugal also pointed out the ongoing retuning of transmitters, which is being done without its participation, carries risks of poor service quality for users – adding that it has already received reports from several regions from dissatisfied TV viewers.