Clix (ISP)
Encyclopedia
Optimus Clix is the triple play
Triple play (telecommunications)
In telecommunications, triple play service is a marketing term for the provisioning of two bandwidth-intensive services, high-speed Internet access and television, and a less bandwidth-demanding service, telephone, over a single broadband connection. Triple play focuses on a combined business...

 brand of Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 telecommunication
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...

 operator Sonaecom, majority-owned by the Sonae
Sonae
Sonae is a conglomerate, and is the largest private employer in Portugal. The company is primarily engaged in the operation of retail stores through its subsidiary Modelo Continente....

 conglomerate, with a participation of France Télécom
France Télécom
France Telecom S.A. is the main telecommunications company in France, the third-largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It currently employs about 180,000 people and has 192.7 million customers worldwide . In 2010 the group had revenue of €45.5 billion...

. Optimus Clix is the main competitor of the dominant operator (Portugal Telecom
Portugal Telecom
Portugal Telecom is the largest telecommunications service provider in Portugal. Although it operates mainly in Portugal and Brazil, it has also a significant presence in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Timor-Leste, Angola, Kenya, the People's Republic of China, and São Tomé and...

) in the residential market. In 2010, it merged with Optimus
Optimus Telecomunicações, S.A.
Optimus Telecomunicações, S.A. is a Portuguese GSM/UMTS mobile operator. The company was incorporated at the end of 1997 after winning the bid for Portugal's third GSM license...

 and was renamed Optimus Clix.

History

In 1999, the Portuguese fixed-line telephone market was set to be deregulated, ending the monopoly of Portugal Telecom
Portugal Telecom
Portugal Telecom is the largest telecommunications service provider in Portugal. Although it operates mainly in Portugal and Brazil, it has also a significant presence in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Timor-Leste, Angola, Kenya, the People's Republic of China, and São Tomé and...

, which prompted Sonaecom, then mainly a mobile phone operator
Cellular network
A cellular network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver known as a cell site or base station. When joined together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area...

 through its brand Optimus
Optimus Telecomunicações, S.A.
Optimus Telecomunicações, S.A. is a Portuguese GSM/UMTS mobile operator. The company was incorporated at the end of 1997 after winning the bid for Portugal's third GSM license...

, to enter that market. Clix was launched on October 27 of that year as a residential Internet Service Provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

 (ISP), together with sister brand Novis (fixed-line telephone service and business ISP). Both brands were supported on the merger of Sonae Redes de Dados (IT consultancy and network management) with IP Global, an ISP which had been acquired earlier in the same year. The initial service offer of Clix consisted of Freeserve
Freeserve
Freeserve was a British Internet Service Provider, founded in 1998. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but merged into the Wanadoo group in 2000, itself a subsidiary of France Telecom...

-type free Internet access, collecting a proportion of the standard telephone line charges, by analog modem or ISDN, and an advertising-supported web portal. The launch slogan was "fazer clix custa nix" (a wordplay on "to click/Clix costs nothing").

On September 7, 2002, Clix launched an ADSL Internet access service, as Clix Turbo. That service was withdrawn on January 20, 2004, under allegations of anti-competitive practices by Portugal Telecom, the simultaneous supplier of the service and a competitor on its own. Sonaecom then entered a strategy of building its own alternative network, to be fully independent from Portugal Telecom.

On March 6, 2004, the Novis and Clix brands were repositioned. Clix became a residential brand, offering fixed-line phone services for the first time. The relaunch campaign was named Revolução das Flores (flower revolution, a reference to the Clix logo and to the Carnation Revolution
Carnation Revolution
The Carnation Revolution , also referred to as the 25 de Abril , was a military coup started on 25 April 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with an unanticipated and extensive campaign of civil resistance...

). The Clix service offer consisted of a 1 Mbit/s Internet ADSL connection and a telephone service without line rental. It was initially available in some areas of Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

 and Oporto.

In November 2004, Clix launched new telephone and ADSL Internet access services, with transfer rates of 2, 4, and 8 Mbit/s. On April 13, 2005, Clix launched a 16 Mbit/s ADSL2+ Internet access offer, upgraded to 20 Mbit/s in 2006. As of December 2006, after periodical changes, Clix supplied two offers: 12 and 24 Mbit/s.

In April 2006, Clix made a soft launch of the SmarTV (IPTV
IPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...

) service, offering Digital Television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...

 and Video on demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...

over the ADSL/ADSL2+ Internet access services, which by this date were available to 50% of the population of Portugal. In 2009 it was renamed Clix TV.

In January 2010, it was Clix was renamed Optimus Clix.

External links

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