Portugal Telecom (PT) has confirmed an upgrade later this year of its entire network in order to be able to offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps to 2.9 million homes by the end of this year. Speeds could reach 400 Mbps in between 3 and 5 years’ time.PT has made clear it wants to become leader in the high-speed market. The company wants to offer a full national coverage and apart from the increasing number of videos on the internet, the future of these networks is in high definition, which the upgrade will help PT offer.
All of Portugal's operators involved in next-generation networks have now shown their strategies, highlighting that their main goal is to offer the same content over different platforms - television, PC and mobile TV.
Last year, rival Sonae launched the service Clix Fibra based on fibre optics. And ONI has already invested €400 million in these kind of networks and promised €22 million extra this year to develop this business.
Finally, major telco DSTelecom is also investing in high-speed networks. The company has put some €400 million into building high-speed networks in more than 50 cities all over Portugal, covering some 30% of the total national population.
Source: Rapid TV News 2009
