The British-owned Anglo-Portuguese Telephone Company (APT) provided telephone services in Portugal’s two largest cities of Lisbon and Porto between 1887 and 1967. It was known locally as the Companhia dos Telefones. In 1967, it was transferred to the Portuguese State.
Origins
The first attempts by the Portuguese government to attract a company to operate a telephone service in Lisbon and Porto were unsuccessful. This was probably because the government was expecting to receive 5% of the gross profits. The second tender resulted in only one proposal, from the Edison Gower-Bell Telephone Company of Europe, Ltd. Under the agreement, the government would receive 7.125% of the company's net revenue. Edison was managed from Britain by its chairman, George Edward Gouraud. The contract was signed in January 1882 and gave Edison exclusivity in the operation of telephone services in Lisbon and Porto for 20 years, with the Portuguese State able to implement a service elsewhere in the country. Services began in Lisbon in April 1882 and in Porto in July of the same year.
In 1887, Edison decided to create a specific telephone company for Portugal. The contract with the government was changed, with the percentage to be paid by the new company now stipulated as 3% of the gross revenue. The new Anglo-Portuguese Telephone Company had two boards of directors, one based in London and the other operating in Portugal. Members of the latter included Afonso de Serpa Leitão Freire Pimentel, 1st Count of Gouveia and the businessman Jorge O'Neill. Becoming known locally as the Companhia dos Telefones, APT encountered a few early difficulties, including charges made by Lisbon City Council for using its roads to install telephone wires. However, the contract with the government was renewed in 1901. In 1927, the arrangements were extended until 1967.
Early operations
During the first half of 1891, APT set up 64 lines in the city of Lisbon and made similar progress in Porto. By the turn of the century both Lisbon and Porto had over one thousand subscribers. In 1904 a connection between Lisbon and Porto was installed. When World War I broke out, APT had around 8000 subscribers. During World War I the company experienced difficulties in obtaining phones, cable and other equipment. Connecting new subscribers was delayed and by 1920 APT had a waiting list of 3000, taking more than two and a half months to fulfil orders. Its performance was also affected by the fact that some of its staff were drafted into the military.
Criticisms
Initially, subscribers' phones were connected to a manual exchange where calls were connected by an operator. From the 1920s, travellers were pointing out that many other European countries already had direct dialling and complaints about APT's services began to make their way into newspapers and into the Portuguese parliament. In 1919, a company succeeded in winning damages for APT's failure to provide a service. In 1923, a subscriber won a court case after refusing to pay APT for the days when their phone was not working. Sometimes, delays in fixing problems were so long that businesses announced in the press when their phones had finally been reconnected.
In January 1921, the owner of the Teatro da Trindade in Lisbon sold it to the APT. The theatre had been opened in 1867. When it was originally constructed, there was a theatre and a separate hall, where events such as the first Portuguese presentation of Edison’s phonograph had taken place. The APT demolished the hall and built its offices on the site and a few months later started to auction some of the contents of the theatre. This caused an outcry among the theatre-going public. An impresario, José Loureiro, then bought the theatre, which was not needed by APT, and it continues to flourish.