In the first instance, it transpired that ANTEL agreed to pay 1.2 million dollars (VAT included) per year to channels 10, 4 and 12 to retransmit their signals through the Vera TV platform. This generated the rejection of the entire Frente Amplio opposition and also the Single Telecommunications Union (SUTEL).
Subsequently, on June 22, a report by the Regulatory Unit for Communication Services (URSEC) URSEC entitled: “Number portability: comparative analysis of prices and yields before and after its implementation” was released. The objective of the report is to continue monitoring the impact of the implementation of number portability, limited to variables: “the monthly price and performance in Gb of the mobile phone plans offered by the three mobile phone operators (ANTEL , Claro and Movistar).
In this sense, the URSEC ensures that “a decrease in the monthly average price of the contract is reflected in the order of 14% (at current prices, without considering inflation), accompanied by a decrease of almost 75% in the average price paid per Gb and an increase of almost 200% in the performance in Gb of the plans considered (almost triple the performance in Gb)”.
However, Senator from the Broad Front Silvia Nane assured that as a result of the implementation of number portability, as of May 22, ANTEL lost 1,256 clients, and questioned that said information is not made public.
While the unions that are members of the Coordinating Table of Entities expressed that the government of Luis Lacalle Pou “lies” and has begun to “speed up the pace of its neoliberal plan of privatization and weakening of state companies.”
Improve competition
For his part, the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, rejected the statements referring to a “dismantling of ANTEL and public companies.”
“I do not behave, among other things for this last action is to comply with a sentence of the Justice”, said the president, adding that, “it also benefits the consumer and the competition”.
He added that recently, in the campaign against the LUC, they predicted that with number portability ANTEL would melt, that it would lose customers. “But I heard the president of ANTEL, Gabriel Gurméndez, assure that the company gained a number of clients because it did a better job, so they lowered prices. Life is like that in the rest of the planet and in Uruguay it shouldn’t be any different”,
