Anatel posted drafts of the new licenses for incumbent providers of fixed-line telephone services, local and long-distance, on its Web site Friday, December 27. Current licenses expire December 31, 2005. The ILECs and Embratel have until June 30, 2003, to apply for renewal. The drafts will remain open for comment until March 17. A public hearing will be held between now and then to discuss the drafts and related documents: license renewal guidelines, a new Universal Access Target Plan (Portuguese-language acronym PGMU), and a new Quality of Service Target Plan (PGMQ). Publication of the renewal guidelines for comment is a novelty. The guidelines set out the possible regulatory changes that telcos should consider when deciding whether to renew. According to José Leite Pereira, a director of Anatel, this document doesn?t present an exhaustive list of changes to come, nor is it legally binding: the law allows Anatel to make regulatory changes even if they affect the contractual terms and conditions of the licenses in force.
Possible changes
Not all the changes listed in the guidelines will necessarily be made, and other changes not listed now could happen in future, warns José Leite Pereira. There are no deadlines for any changes. The document presents general guidelines and guidelines on user charges, remuneration tariffs, network interconnection, portability, and public fixed-line telephone service provision. Here is a summary of the main changes listed:
* Creation of special classes of public fixed-line service with different rules from those currently in force for residential, non-residential and trunk lines (including specification of monthly subscription charges as percentages of current values)
* Possibility of offering prepaid and post-paid services with usage limit and/or combination of both
* Introduction of ?Bill and Keep? system for providers of public fixed-line local service
* Introduction of standard interconnection agreement
* Possibility of offering broader frequency bands than current required minimum of 3.1 kHz, allowing telcos to provide advanced ISDN-type services.
