Tied (up) in contracts
Anacom insists on cutting the maximum lock-in period to six months, a subject that resurfaces from time to time. But the Government will find it hard to justify another change to the law politically.
Someone once told me that it is easier to get a divorce than to tear up a telecoms contract in Portugal. The operators tie customers in for two years with lock-in clauses. When that commitment comes to an end, they find a way to tie them in again.
The subject of lock-ins reappears from time to time and resurfaced this week, when Anacom called in journalists to press a proposal it had already made in the past: cutting the maximum lock-in period from 24 to six months. For the regulator, the last straw was the 7.8% increases that Meo, Nos and Vodafone are putting through, which reached customers of the first two precisely this Wednesday.
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 3 February 2023.