Portugal’s three leading providers of electronic communications services increased their fees for triple-play services by 3.3% between October and this month.
According to the regulator ANACOM, they reduced the quality of their offers, with broadband download speeds falling from 100Mbps to 30Mbps for all three (Meo, Nos and Vodafone) and in the case of two (Meo and Nos) introducing monthly fixed data traffic limits of 500 GB and 600 GB.
The latter, according to ANACOM, is something that has not been seen in the Portuguese market since the beginning of broadband offers, though Nos has now removed the limit.
ANACOM notes that the price increase of 3.3%, or €1, is higher than the rate of inflation. It also says that the cost of triple-play offers have been the same among the three leading operators since 2018.
Triple-play services are currently received by around 1.7 million customers in Portugal, or 40% of subscribers.
ANACOM points out that the cost of triple-play services in Portugal compares unfavourable with the international average.
Although the country’s fourth operator Nowo has lower monthly fees than the other three providers, it does not offer a national service and have its own mobile network, instead operating as an MVNO.