In a statement sent to the Lusa agency, ACOP, based in Coimbra, also intends that Anacom establishes mandatory minimum internet service speeds "never lower than 20 megabits [Mbps]", through which operators "guarantee all citizens, in all parts of the national territory, conditions of equal access to internet communication".

ACOP's claims are contained in a letter sent to João Cadete de Matos, president of Anacom and signed by 14 personalities linked to civil rights, which includes the specialist in Consumer Law, Mário Frota, the president of the civic association Transparency and Integrity, João Paulo Batalha, lawyer Garcia Pereira and psychologist Joana Amaral Dias.

In the document, the subscribers also ask Anacom that, after conducting the survey on internet conditions at national level, act with operators "to refund to consumers any payments made for service levels below those contracted".

While assuming that operators "have made efforts to ensure the responsiveness of telecommunications networks", especially in the current covid-19 pandemic, the signatories "consider Anacom's intervention as a sector regulator to be essential and urgent".

"We recall that, in 2011, a report by the United Nations Human Rights Council recognised access to the internet, free of conditions and restrictions, as a human right, crucial for the full realisation of the right to freedom of expression and opinion", he points out ACOP.

"In addition, in the current period of pandemic crisis that the country is experiencing, difficulties in accessing the internet cause serious damage to the ability of families to ensure distance education for their children and the teleworking regimes in force in most organisations, which is an objective factor of aggravating economic and social inequalities between citizens from different parts of the national territory", he adds.

ACOP recalls, on the other hand, that just over a month ago, on 7 May, it wrote to the Minister of State, Economy and Digital Transition, Pedro Siza Vieira, with knowledge to Anacom, asking for an "exhaustive verification of internet speeds practiced by the various operators in the non-urban areas of Portuguese territory".

At the time, the consumer association showed that in various parts of the country "there are recurring" speeds "below" 2 Mbps on fixed internet services and below 500kbits [0.5 Mbps] on the mobile network internet.

In other information sent to the Lusa agency, ACOP defends, on the same theme, a "non-discrimination [in internet access] between those who live in urban areas and those who are domiciled in areas outside the cities".

"That children and young people have equal access to the means of distance education now being promoted (and many unfortunately do not)," argues the association.