Considering that the gross domestic product per capita in Portugal is around EUR 18,550 (Eurostat, 2019), the amount spent on basic news media, in a scenario like the one shown above, is fairly high, although the evolution in the last ten years shows some important reductions (see Table 11). But spending about EUR 80 per month (or EUR 50 per month if you choose digital subscriptions) for access to the main media and the Internet means it is a significant expense in a country where the minimum salary, legally prescribed, is now EUR 600 a month (it was EUR 450 back in 2009), and the average monthly income is slightly higher than EUR 1,000.
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Prices for a print newspaper copy vary between EUR 1.10–1.20 for weekdays and EUR 1.50–1.70 for Saturdays and Sundays when there’s usually an extra supplement or magazine. The weekly Expresso costs EUR 4 and the newsmagazine Visão costs EUR 3.50. But paper editions are being sold less and less, while digital editions rise, and with much more competitive prices. You can subscribe to the digital edition of the main dailies for less than EUR 80, which is about EUR 0.20 per day. All the newspapers now have more or less generous paywalls. Part of the content is open[i] and another part (usually the most required pieces of reporting) is “premium”, which means it must be paid for, be it as a single purchase or through subscription.
Prices for Internet access and cable television together are not very high, but they are higher than they should be if we compare them internationally. The National Authority for Communications (ANACOM), which regulates electronic communications in the country, recently published a comparative study showing that prices for telecommunications in Portugal went up by 7.7 per cent between 2009 and 2020 while they went down 10.4 per cent in the EU countries (ANACOM, 2020b). This puts Portugal among the European countries where telecommunications are more expensive, holding the 25th position in the ranking of the EU 28 countries in prices for broadband mobile access, and a position between 11th and 18th in mobile voice service and mobile Internet access.
The reason for this, according to ANACOM, is the fact that all the operators focus on selling triple-play or fourth-play packages (cable television + Internet access + telephone or mobile) that include more services than an average consumer needs. For example, all packages include telephone, when the vast majority of people do not use it any longer, preferring the mobile phone. Moreover, all packages include 120 or 200 television channels, when the average consumer regularly sees only a very small part. All packages offer up to 2,000 or 3,500 minutes of conversation on the mobile when the average doesn’t go much beyond 200 minutes. Some packages even include 1,000 minutes of international calls, when, according to ANACOM data, the average use is only five minutes. This means that consumers buy more than they need, and pay more than they should, because of this “package logic” that is actively pursued by all the operators in the market. The very aggressive marketing campaigns of those operators, offering interesting monthly packages that cost EUR 29.99 or EUR 34.99 (usually with a fidelity clause that obliges you to stay 24 months with that specific operator) end up being seductive, and consumers accept them as a seemingly good deal.
[i]During the first months of the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus, all the Portuguese newspapers decided to give free access to all content directly or indirectly related with the disease and corresponding healthcare.
