Optimus operation started on 15 September 1998, against the two longer-established operators TMN and Telecel, now a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group. The start was preceded by an intense and original advertising campaign. The form found by the company to bring in customers was the creation of a statute called Pioneiros, where pre-registered customers could make low-cost calls for life, just 5 escudos per minute to other Optimus customers—a fraction of then current mobile tariffs. The campaign also benefitted enormously by parent Sonae owning the Continente chain of hypermarkets, thus reaching mass-market at a cost-effective rate. Optimus prefix was 93. Numbers were 10 or 11-digits long. Optimus adopted the concept of pre-paid cards, which had been invented in Portugal and was already a success with its competitors, by creating the Boomerang tariff plan. The very aggressive strategy used by Optimus to enter the Portuguese mobile telecommunications market paid off, because it attracted 700,000 customers in only one year of operation. Market share was 13%.
1999 - 2013
In September 1999, Optimus parent Sonaecom launched Novis, a fixed-line operator, and Clix, an Internet service provider and web portal. In January 2000, Optimus collected another GSM award in Cannes for the best GSM innovation for its Taxi Digital project to use the Optimus network in the transmission and processing of data between taxi dispatch centrals and their cars. In 2000, the company's prefix was changed from 0933 to 93 as part of the country's new numbering system. All other digits remained the same, for 9-digit long numbers. In June 2000, Optimus reached the one millionth customer, approximately 80% of which were buyers of pre-paid cards. Its market share had by then climbed to 16%. In December 2000, Optimus won the bid for one of the four licenses for UMTS. Handsets using this third-generation mobile technology can relay images and video and access the Internet at quasi-broadband speeds. In June 2003, Optimus launched a mobile portal, Optimus Zone, on the trail of Vodafone live!, launched in November 2005. In 2004, France Télécom became the major shareholder, with the holding company Atlas Services Belgium as the largest minority owner. Optimus changed its corporate image from green to orange, fostering rumours that this would be the first step to change the brand to Orange. The logo was slightly simplified and turned into all-orange. In June 2005, Optimus launched a wireless Internet access service over GPRS and 3G, with downlink speeds of up to 386 kbit/s, under the brand Kanguru. This launch had an innovative pricing structure for such a service. For 30 Euro/month, 10 GB of traffic were included. In May 2006, Optimus launched Kanguru Xpress over HSDPA, with downlink speeds of up to 1.8 Mbit/s. Its slogan was: "Não salta, voa". In April 2008, Optimus launched the TAG tariff. For a €10 monthly, converted in credit for communications, all communications between TAG users are absolutely free and limitless. There is also a PC-based application working as a WebPhone, where all sorts of communications can be made in the same manner that in a mobile phone. Due to this launch, the competitors launched their own versions of TAG. The most curious thing is that Optimus and the competitors are constantly changing their tariff's conditions like a kind of a battle being held by the three Portuguese Mobile communications service providers. Optimus has made the mobile market in Portugal more dynamic, though it still is the third operator in market share and financial results. Since 2012, Optimus and ZON are in talks to merge the two companies. In 2013 the Regulatory Authority for the Media has informed the Competition Authority that is not opposed to the deal.
2014 - present
As of 16 May 2014, ZON Multimédia and Optimus Telecomunicações, S.A. are one new company called NOS.
Awards
The Pioneers marketing campaign was recognized internationally. In early 1999, NOS won the GSM Marketing Success award of the GSM Association in Cannes, France, for become the third operator with the most market share after a year of operation. It was the first Portuguese operator to achieve such a result in a World-wide GSM Congress. This was to be the first of many awards won by Optimus in subsequent years.
