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(portugal) PT, Zon fined EUR 53 mln for broadband market abuse

  • 03-09-2009 9:08am
    #1
    bealtine
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,051 ✭✭✭


    PT, Zon fined EUR 53 mln for broadband market abuse Wednesday 2 September 2009

    Portugal's competition watchdog (Autoridade da Concorrencia – AdC) has fined Portugal Telecom and Zon for abuse of dominant position on the broadband internet market in the period 22 May 2002 – 30 June 2003. Portugal Telecom was fined EUR 45.016 million, while Zon will have to pay around EUR 8.046 million. The antitrust body's decision follows complaints by competitors in 2003 and 2004. The AdC investigation showed the PT group had a market share of over 70.7 percent in retail broadband accesss in 2002 and 77.7 percent in 2003 and served as sole wholesale provider on the local market. According to AdC, "an investigation proved the abuse of the dominant position [by PT and Zon], demonstrating the existence of competition restricting practices such as artificial price-fixing, discrimination and limits on production, distribution, technical development and investment". PT and Zon announced they will aapeal AdC's "unfair" ruling before the Lisbon Commercial Court.


Comments

  • #2
    Galen
    Closed Accounts Posts: 664 ✭✭✭Galen


    Fat chance of that happening here, neither comreg or the gov have the guts.


  • #3
    cgarvey
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,889 ✭✭✭cgarvey


    What stark contrast to the ComReg decision released yesterday as well.

    eircom severly abuse anti-competitive regulation (granting their retail arm access to UANs that no reseller/competitor has accesss to, in such a manner). It gets reported to ComReg in May 2006. That's 3 years ago. ComReg confirmed the widespread abuse one year after the report (it's actually hillarious reading!). Finally, 2 years later, without reviewing the system again, ComReg has considered the mater closed.

    So let's recap:
    + eircom have engaged in anti-competitive practices, of a severe nature, for OVER 3 years.
    + eircom say they fixed the issue, ComReg review and find otherwise. 1 YEAR later.
    + 2 YEARS later (3 years after the intial complaint report), ComReg simply announce that eircom have been in breach. NO MENTION OF ANY CONSEQUENCE (such as a fine, however limited it may be .. none of this "we can't fine" nonsense). Then they consider the matter closed based on SCREENSHOTS!!??

    That's about as stark as contrast as you'll be able to get. That's black vs. white.

    Now, where are ALTO? Where are the BitStream resellers? No comment to make? Hard to have sympathy for 'em.


  • #4
    Tom Young
    Legal Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 4,338 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tom Young


    ALTO was involved with the preliminary report and evidencing of this issue. I believe there was actually some media comment from them last Friday.

    My remarks is that I'd agree with your assumptions cgarvey, it's not at all acceptable.

    What's going on at the moment in the market is as bad, the 10 day WLR/CPS cool off window is gone for quite some time and eircom retail sales staff seem to be able to 'miraculously' know the lost account numbers. So you can only assume that this is still going on. One statistic I heard was that 50% of a resellers new sign-up base had churned or move back to eircom retail in a 3 month period. Madness.

    Tom


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