Network Cabling, Fibre and ITED Telecoms Installations in Porto and Greater Porto

What ITED Is and When You Need It

ITED is the set of technical rules for telecoms infrastructure inside buildings: the coaxial cable for your TV, the copper pair or fibre for your phone and internet, the network sockets, the ATI (the telecoms cabinet inside your flat or house) and the ATE (the shared cabinet at the building's entrance). Compliance is overseen by ANACOM, Portugal's communications regulator, and the rules apply both to new builds and to refurbishments of existing buildings.

In real life it tends to come up in one of three situations: a new build, a major refurbishment of a flat, and the most common of all, slow internet or a patchy TV picture in an older Porto apartment where the telecoms wiring has never been redone.

In buildings put up before 2009 it is common to find degraded coaxial cable, wiring that has been improvised piece by piece over the decades and no structured network at all. The upshot is a fast fibre line arriving at the front door of the building that turns into a mediocre signal by the time it reaches your home office.

What an ITED Installation Involves

We install or reorganise the ATI in your property, run Category 6 network cable to the places where you need a wired connection, fit RJ45 and coaxial sockets, and leave the whole distribution labelled and tested. If you work from home, one network socket in your study is worth more than any Wi-Fi booster you can buy.

We also do the part nobody sees, which fixes half the complaints we hear: removing old splitters and branch-offs, replacing degraded cable and untangling everything that had been crammed into the same box. When the issue is Wi-Fi coverage in a house on several floors in Leça or in Valongo, the right answer is usually a cable run to a second access point rather than yet another range extender.

In apartment buildings we liaise with the condomínio administrator (the managing agent for the building's owners' association) about what belongs to the ATE and the shared risers and what belongs to your flat. We tell you clearly where the work we can do for you ends and where the decisions that belong to the condomínio begin.

Certification and Paperwork

New builds and refurbishments that fall within the rules require an ITED design and a termo de responsabilidade (a signed statement of responsibility) from a technician registered with ANACOM. If that describes your project, tell us in your very first message: it changes what has to be prepared and who has to sign.

Most domestic jobs, such as running network cable, reorganising the ATI, replacing sockets or sorting out the TV distribution, do not need any certification process and are handled like any ordinary job.

We don't promise what we can't sign off. When a job needs a registered ITED technician and that isn't us, we say so from the outset and bring in someone who holds the registration, rather than leaving you to find out halfway through the work.

ITED 4: the Current Manual and What Has Changed

ITED is the rulebook that sets out how telecoms infrastructure must be built inside a building in Portugal, and ANACOM is the body that regulates it. The manual is published in editions; the latest is ITED 4, and it is the one that applies today to any new build or significant refurbishment.

Every recent edition has pushed in the same direction: more fibre, less copper. Homes are now designed on the assumption that the main connection comes in over fibre optic, and the internal network is no longer planned just for a telephone and a television but for high-speed data.

In practice, if your home was built or refurbished a good many years ago, it probably has infrastructure designed for a world that no longer exists: few network sockets, older-category cable and no provision for fibre. That isn't poor workmanship; the rules simply moved on. What you need to know is what can be kept and what is worth redoing, and that can only be judged on site.

Structured Cabling: Why the Internet Only Drops Out in One Room

Structured cabling means organising the whole home network from one central point, with a data cable running to each room, instead of adding Wi-Fi repeaters one by one as problems appear.

It is the difference between a network that performs the same throughout the house and one that works well in the living room and badly in the back bedroom. People working from home, households streaming TV in several rooms and anyone who has fitted security cameras notice the difference straight away, because those are exactly the cases where Wi-Fi alone falls short.

During a renovation, running cable is cheap because the walls are already open. Once everything is plastered and painted, the same job costs several times as much. If you are planning building work, now is the moment to decide.

ITUR: When the Infrastructure Sits Outside the Building

ITUR is the counterpart of ITED for everything outside the building: housing developments, estates and groups of buildings. Whereas ITED covers the network from the building's entrance to each individual home, ITUR covers the infrastructure that connects that building to everything else, meaning the ducts, chambers and cabling across the development.

It matters above all to anyone developing or managing a housing development or a gated community, because without that infrastructure in good order the operators cannot bring their service to each house. It often surfaces when someone buys on a new development and discovers they cannot get fibre.

My internet is only slow in one room. Is that my provider's fault?

Most of the time, no. If the speed next to the router is good and it drops in other rooms, the issue is coverage or the internal wiring. A network cable to that spot fixes for good what repeaters only paper over.

Do I need an ITED design to refurbish my flat?

It depends on the scale of the work. Major refurbishments that alter the telecoms infrastructure require a design and a signed statement of responsibility; small cabling and socket jobs do not. We clarify which applies to you before we start.

Can you add network sockets without knocking holes in the walls?

Often, yes, by using existing conduit, chases that are already there or a discreet trunking run along the skirting board. We look at the route during the visit and tell you what is possible without building work.

Do you deal with the TV side as well?

Yes: TV distribution, coaxial sockets, signal amplification when it is needed, and fixing older installations with a weak signal or a picture that breaks up.

Do I need an ITED-certified installer, or can any electrician do it?

For work that requires certification and the handing over of documentation, it has to be an installer registered with ANACOM, the Portuguese communications regulator. That is not the same as being an electrician: it is a separate qualification with a registration you can check. Always ask for the registration number before hiring anyone. Someone who has one will be happy to give it to you.

When do I need an ITED design and not just the installation?

New builds and full-scale refurbishments require a design, drawn up by a qualified designer, before anything at all is installed. One-off jobs in a single property, such as running network cable to another room or replacing an intercom, normally do not. We tell you which case you are in before going ahead, because it changes both the timescale and the cost.

What is the ITED certificate and what is it for?

It is the document proving that the infrastructure was built to the manual in force. It is often requested when a property is sold or let, and also by operators before they connect a service. If the installation was done by someone who could not certify it, the document simply does not exist, and that always comes to light at the worst possible moment, with the deal already on the table.