Portugal's competition watchdog (Autoridade da Concorrencia – AdC) has fined Portugal Telecom and Zon for abuse of dominant position on the broadband internet market in the period 22 May 2002 – 30 June 2003. Portugal Telecom was fined EUR 45.016 million, while Zon will have to pay around EUR 8.046 million. The antitrust body's decision follows complaints by competitors in 2003 and 2004. The AdC investigation showed the PT group had a market share of over 70.7 percent in retail broadband accesss in 2002 and 77.7 percent in 2003 and served as sole wholesale provider on the local market. According to AdC, "an investigation proved the abuse of the dominant position [by PT and Zon], demonstrating the existence of competition restricting practices such as artificial price-fixing, discrimination and limits on production, distribution, technical development and investment". PT and Zon announced they will aapeal AdC's "unfair" ruling before the Lisbon Commercial Court.
