Anatel opens consultation for the elaboration of a fixed telephony concession notice

This is a machine translation of Anatel's press release

The National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) started this Wednesday, August 9th, Public Consultation No. 43 , through which it will receive contributions – until September 25th – to the proposed bidding notice for the concession of fixed telephony. Comments and suggestions, duly justified, must be forwarded through the Participa Anatel system.

As approved by the Board of Directors, the objective of the event is to maintain the universalization and continuity of the service, achieved after more than 25 years of privatization. With the end of the current concession contracts, in December 2025, if the providers do not adapt their concessions for authorizations or do not extend the concessions under the current terms, there is a need to inaugurate a new cycle.

Based on how the telecommunications sector has evolved, the new concession may have lighter obligations in relation to current contracts, including with regard to the locations that must be served.

In order to make the event more attractive, the possibility of complementing the revenue obtained from the execution of the service with resources from the Fund for the Universalization of Telecommunications Services (Fust) was designed, with the purpose of meeting the commitments of the General Plan of Goals for Universalization.

The draft of the Bidding Notice was prepared based on the 5G Notice, which guided the most recent bidding procedure to grant authorization to explore telecommunications services and for the use of radio frequencies promoted by Anatel. The following rules followed the same logic as the 5G Notice:

• objections to the Notice,
• conditions of participation,
• receipt of identification documents, tax compliance and proposals,
• adjudication of the object of the bidding,
• homologation of the result and formalization of the granting instruments,
• appeals and demonstrations, and
• penalties to be eventually applied.

The rules for preparing proposals were adapted to consider the option of financing commitments to meet compliance, according to the Regulatory Impact Analysis Report (AIR). In this way, bidders must present not the amount they intend to pay for the grant, but the amount to be obtained from the Fust in order to complement the revenues arising from the collection of user fees and other revenues arising from the exploration of the telecommunications services, to pay for compliance with the service commitments set forth in this Bid Notice, during the term of the grant.

The grant areas for the new concession, as well as the bidding lots, were inspired by the formatting of the 5G auction.

Documents relating to Public Consultation No. 43 are available in Process No. 53500.292359/2022-42.