Basic education students (until 9th grade) will take television classes at RTP Memória. The channel searching for exceptional RTP archives will restore Telescola, the idea of a television school that worked there in the 1960s. A lot has changed from 1960 to 2020, but in terms of communications, television is still the most common. Thanks to the presence of a free television service consisting of six channels (four in public television services), anyone can take and watch television. In general, you only need a device and a decoder that costs 1.5 times the cost.
But what about the Internet?
Covid-19 has closed schools, universities, and polytechnics around the world. In Portugal, in the weeks before Easter break, students and teachers had a period of forced habituation to the new reality. In other words, it was remote lessons via video calls and homework delivered over the Internet. Suddenly, schools and academia have had to learn to work with tools like Zoom or Moodle and try to keep things normal through the internet.
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) in 2019, 80.9% of households are using the Internet at home, and talking about families with young people under the age of 15 will increase this rate to 94.5%. Overall, 19.1% of homes are offline, and 5.5% of students by grade 9 are disconnected. Another related issue is related to the quality of Internet access. INE reported that only 78.0% of homes have access to broadband, including cable, ADSL, and fiber. But of these, only fiber optics ensure the fast and reliable connections that are essential for conducting video calling classes. Especially if more than one person in the same house needs to be connected at the same time.
According to data at the end of 2019 from Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM), only 67.3% of families have 2.8 million customers subscribed to fiber optic service. However, fiber reaches 78.7% of Portuguese households. The addition of the so-called HFC, i.e. hybrid fiber with coaxial cable, raises the ratio to 84.5%. That is, there are 5.3 million households connected to high-speed networks. The data is encouraging, and according to ANACOM, cabeladas with high-speed internet access in both locations are increasing year by year. However, covering the territory of the country is far from a homogeneous and fair reality, and even in the middle of cities like Setúbal there are areas without this option.
Agenda Portugal Digital's promise in 2015 defined that within five years (i.e. by 2020) the entire population will have access to at least 30 Mbps of internet and at least 50% of homes will have 100 Mbps. There will be territorial consolidation and investment in rural areas that promote equal opportunities. However, the reality is that more rural and poorer areas where operators do not guarantee financial returns are particularly affected by slow and/or stable internet connections.
Since there are no longer public funds to guide the implementation of fiber optic networks in the region, and this investment is private, Portugal has received the mercy of market law, which has resulted in more profits from telecommunications companies (MEO, NOS, Vodafone). Profitability. Nevertheless, efforts have been made to counter the abandonment of rural areas with the help of the European Union. DSTelecom is a private company that installs fiber-optic infrastructure at the furthest location in the country and then leases it to operators for marketing to customers.
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