“The Romanian authority is currently conducting an investigation into a potential abuse of a dominant position by the cellular telephony operators in Romania (Orange, Vodafone, Cosmote, RCS&RDS) on the market of mobile voice call termination services,” Simona Barbu, Competition Council’s spokeswoman told ZF.
The operators risk fines of 0.5% to 10% of their turnovers, that is EUR13 million to EUR268 million in all, judging by the cumulated turnover posted by the four operators in 2010. A competition watchdog investigation usually takes two years.
This might turn out to be the largest investigation conducted by the council so far. It started the probe discretely this year, but information on the new case on its desk started spreading on the telecom market.
The answer sent to ZF did not provide any more details. “Considering this is an investigation in progress, we cannot reveal further information about it,” Barbu added.
It shows, however, that the probe might have to do with the commercial relations of Orange, Vodafone, Cosmote and RCS&RDS with smaller operators. For a user of a telephony provider to be able to call an Orange, Vodafone, Cosmote and RCS&RDS customer, their company has to sign an interconnection agreement to allow termination of calls in the above-mentioned networks (i.e. routing of calls from one network to another). Telephony provider relations are regulated by decisions of the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM), which stipulate the tariffs and terms for network interconnection. It is yet unclear what exactly the Competition Council is looking for considering the investigation did not start from a complaint.
The competition watchdog officials also told ZF that they were looking into the deal whereby Cosmote Romania took over Telemobil (Zapp).
“The Competition Council is currently evaluating the impact of the decisions made by the competition authority over the Telemobil-Cosmote economic concentration operation on the markets of mobile communications services,” Simona Barbu said.
Cosmote acquired Telemobil in a EUR207 million deal in 2009. The main asset it was interested in was the 3G license and mobile Internet network of the operator.