Altice Portugal puts Anacom in court

Portugal’s telecoms giant Altice Portugal is taking the Portuguese telecoms market regulator to court in an attempt to prevent it from changing the rules governing the 5G auction currently underway.

The legal action was filed at a Lisbon court on Wednesday according to the company in a communiqué.
“Altice Portugal advanced on Wednesday with an administrative judicial challenge based on the declaration of invalidity of that regulation,” said a company official source.
The same source went on to explain: “The 5G regulation, in addition to representing a huge backward step for competitiveness and putting the sustainability of the sector at risk, is stifling and destroying investment and value creation. We cannot consent to this prejudice from multiple illegalities in an auction which in an excessive and unjustified manner had given preferential treatment to new entrants.”
“It should on this matter be emphasised that Anacom pressed ahead with this regulation without undertaking a market study and without taking into consideration the public policy objectives created by the State through a Council of Ministers Government resolution approved to that effect, yet (Anacom) is interfering in the market as though it were actually a player, by favouring specific operators to the detriment of others, and thereby seeking to influence or shape the way the market operates in the sense that it is more convenient from the standpoint of its own perspective and logic.”
The legal action, which also involves other companies in the sector, arises at a time at which the main bidding phase for the 5-G brands has reached its 50th day of bidding. Anacom announced recently that it would try and change the regulations to speed up the completion of the operation.
Altice Portugal continues to await the decision of the Lisbon Administrative Court on the injunction that was put on Anacom in November 2020.