On January 16 2012 Brazil's telecommunications regulator (ANATEL) submitted to public consultation an application it had received for the annulment of several provisions of:
- the Multimedia Communication Service Quality Management Regulation, approved by Resolution 574/2011; and
- the Personal Mobile Service Quality Management Regulation, approved by Resolution 575/2011.
The application for annulment was submitted by Oi, one of the country's leading telecommunications services providers.
Due to the relevance of the application, instead of only hearing comments and requesting that input be physically filed at its headquarters or regional offices, ANATEL opened a formal public consultation on the subject, as is the case for regulations produced by the regulator itself.
The provisions affected by the application relate to the indicators used to evaluate the quality of fixed and mobile broadband and the quality perceived by the user, among other things. These indicators include:
- instantaneous speed - namely, the speed calculated in each of a number of measurements made by specified software. The regulation establishes that the result cannot be less than 20% of the maximum speed contracted by the subscriber, both for download and for upload, in 95% of the measurements. The goal of 20% is valid for 12 months from the effective date of the regulation. During the subsequent 12 months it will be 30% and thereafter 40%;
- average speed - namely, the result of the average of all measurements taken in any one month for the provider's network. The initial goal is 60%, for the first 12 months. During the subsequent 12 months it will be 70% and thereafter 80%; and
- bidirectional latency - namely, the time that a data packet takes to travel a network from a given point to its destination and return to its origin. The goal, to be observed in 95% of the measurements, is a maximum of 80 milliseconds for terrestrial connections and 900 milliseconds for connections via satellite.
Contributions may be sent to the agency until February 1 2012.
For further information on this topic please contact Ricardo Barretto Ferreira Da Silva, Fabio Ferreira Kujawski or Thays Castaldi Gentil at BARRETTO FERREIRA KUJAWSKI E BRANCHER – Sociedade de Advogados by telephone (+55 11 3897 0300), fax (+55 11 3897 0330) or email ([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).