Madeira News Blog

(23rd May). Anyone interested in the Zon 100 mbps service mentioned a few days ago, will have to pay €70 a month for that and the privilege of having 100 TV channels. ‘Zon Wideband Net’ will have a download speed of 100 megabits per second (yeah right!!), and an upload speed of 6 mbps. Free telephone calls are standard to Portugal landlines. Although the service isn’t yet available, it is possible to sign up now for an estimated end-of-July launch. Zon rang me up last week to see if I was happy with their service. No I am not I said, and as soon as my obligation to stay with you finishes in August, I am off to join MEO. I thought have thought that would of brought a counter-offer of some sort, but perhaps they are just letting me sweat for a while.

‘Madeira Doesn’t Have Conditions To Treat Turtles’. A ‘boba’ turtle, which was found swimming along the southern coast of the bay of Funchal, but in difficulties, was collected from the sea by a  tourism boat and delivered to the Marine Biology Station of Funchal, near the Cais do Carvão (The old coal pier). The turtle, about 70 centimetres in length, had a damaged rear flipper, caused by a tangled bag of human rubbish. The rubbish was removed on the boat. Jorge Martins, biologist of the Marine Biology Station, reported that "the turtle would be hospitalized", but there is no hospital or facility to deal with such cases. Given that the injury was to the flipper, it was treated with the necessary medication and with antibiotics, and with ongoing treatment that will last for another four to five days, it should then be ready to be released.

(23rd May). ‘Promenade’ Closes The Term Of Madeira Investments – The Pestana Group has 10 hotels on Madeira and Porto Santo with a total of 2667 rooms’. President Jardim challenged the Pestana Group to build another hotel on Madeira before it’s mandate(?) expires in 2011. The President of the largest national hotel group, responded that it has already provided short-term investments in the Autonomous Region, saying that it now has ten hotel units that are sufficient for current demand, and that in the time of crisis are already competing with each other. Jardim was speaking at the inauguration of the latest hotel in the group ‘The Pestana Promenade’, which opened for it’s first guests in March. Nice try Uncle Bertie, and that just proves that you don’t read the Diário (obviously opting for that rag from the dark side instead), as it was reported just a few days ago (14th) that the Pestana group had sold 4 hotels (on lease-back terms) to pay for it’s investment debts.

(22nd May). ‘Free Zone Is Sacred – Jardim announced that the government is looking for partnerships with the business leaders of Madeira’. The president of Madeira said on Thursday "The Free Zone is sacred to the Government, and that is one of the reasons why we will present a draft constitutional revision, because we need more mechanisms to develop it". The ‘Free Zone’ is a business centre that has special tax advantages, similar to an ‘offshore’. The president of the Association of Commercial and Industrial Funchal (ACIF) said "the International Business Centre of Madeira is a structural pillar of the regional economy and a key instrument to ensure the competitiveness of Madeira abroad", fulfilling the objective will over time reduce the need for the region to receive funding from the European Union and the state. Jardim agrees. In particular Jardim is looking for a partnership to build a new hospital in Funchal, and is open to all suggestions and solutions.

(18th May) The CEO of Zon, one of the two major players in the TV and internet market on Madeira, says that the company is going to change the cable network, and a 100Mbps network “will be operating in the short term”. The new generation network will enable services for video and television in HD (high definition), with much faster transmission speeds for communications and entertainment and services much more advanced. Currently there are 8 channels available in HD, but with the new network this can be increased to 20 or 30 channels. He wouldn’t commit to a date yet, but estimates that news will be available in 2 or 3 weeks. The fixed line telephone service introduced by Zon in 2007 (?) now has 17 thousand customers, with a target to reach 20 thousand by the end of this year. I think most customers get the telephone for nothing, as part of a customer retention offer for the whole package of services, but they will have to do something clever with their prices fairly soon to stop customers moving across to rival MEO.

In a separate article, Zon admits it is still interested in operating the fifth terrestrial channel, despite having already been eliminated at the first hurdle for its failure to meet the conditions to ensure competition in the selection contest.

And sticking with telecommunications, the same CEO of ZON announced that in one to two years it will be possible to video conference through our televisions, combining voice and image in a routine telephone call. The company needs more time to develop the technology, but another factor will be persuading equipment manufacturers to produce the hardware needed at a price that will be attractive to the market.

(19th May). ‘Rodrigo Has Transplant Scheduled For 29th – The procedure will take place in the Portuguese Institute of Oncology in Lisbon. The family expectation increases’. After a long long search for a suitable bone marrow donor, that took baby Rodrigo Sousa almost into his final weeks of life, the medical procedure has now been arranged for a week on Friday. Rodrigo has been undergoing chemotherapy, but has managed to put on weight and now has 5 teeth. The donor, a lady from Germany, was eventually found on an international computer database.

(19th May). ‘Project Costing €3.2 Million In Ponta do Sol Has To Be Rectified – The protective barrier in the sea was inaugurated just a few years ago, but the council say that it was badly done and demands alterations’. The government of Madeira requires the construction, completed in 2004, to be “dismantled”. The corrective work is likely to be more costly than the original project, and will have the aim of restoring quality and allowing more space and depth in this bathing zone. To do so, the beach area would have to be widened, and the stretch of the concrete construction that runs parallel to the beach would have to be moved out further. The article says that it is almost impossible to swim in the existing area, especially when the tide is low. The reasons for why the barrier is as it is at present is not something I can discuss here, but it is well discussed locally (at a rumour level) that there were other options available back in 2003 during the planning stage, and the options chosen for Ponta do Sol, Calheta, Ribeira Brava, and probably others, were possibly not chosen for reasons of ‘best for purpose’, best value, and public approval.

(19th May). ‘Boats Of Sanos In Dry Dock 6 Years Already Lost Revenue Of €100,000’. This story relates to two boats that were brought here from the UK 6 years ago, and for legal reasons were prevented from going to sea. They were purchased for search and rescue missions, and their time spent on dry land is estimated to have been at the cost of €100,000, half of that due to rental space in the dry dock, and a similar amount will be needed for maintenance. The boats were grounded because of problems of certification, but the operator SANAS-Madeira believes they will be put into service around mid-July, subject to a final inspection.

It was unavoidable to notice on RTP news this morning, that the Jornal da Madeira had the headline ‘160 Cases Of False Notes In 4 Month’. Don’t worry I haven’t been sucked into the dark side and actually looked at the government rag, but I thought it best to mention it so you can be on the lookout for any dodgy looking banknotes that may come your way.