Breakthrough in Portugal (12 March 2001) The next country to mandate an unmetered wholesale Internet access product is Portugal, The sequence of events, as outlined by an excellent campaign site, is strangely familiar: Portugal Telecom, in December 2000, releases an unmetered wholesale product; Everyone else finds it unsatisfactory; In early 2001 meetings take place with the object of developing a workable product; This succeeds and a direction from the regulator follows. The product is not based on FRIACO; it is priced at one of two flat rates, depending on where interconnections are made, per end user. We note that the whole process of negotiation took three months, and that the direction is only four pages long; often it pays not to be first so having to work everything out from scratch. (Thanks to Wolfgang Schwendt for spotting the story, and to Munir for translations).