Spain’s competition authority told operators to remove all limits on consumers switching providers within five days of the end of a state of emergency in the country, having suspended rules as part of lockdown measures.

The National Commission of Markets and Competition said once an end to emergency measures related to Covid-19 (coronavirus) had been declared, operators must increase capacity for number portability by at least 15 per cent per day until they reached levels available before the crisis.

Spain’s state of emergency is scheduled to expire on 10 May, but has already been extended twice from its original period and so this date is subject to change.

As part of restrictions imposed on 17 March operators suspended all new number portability requests for both fixed and mobile services. This allowed reallocation of resources to maintaining network operation as demand for connectivity increased.

For fixed lines, suspension of switching also removed a need to send engineers to physically change providers at people’s homes.

The complete ban on porting to new service providers was eased in April, replaced by specific limits placed on the types of transfers allowed and number of switches operators could perform per day.