Photo: EUROPA PRESS/ORANGE-FTGROUP
MADRID, 16 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -
Orange has denounced the agreement between Telefónica and Yoigo before the National Competition Commission (CNC) and requested the precautionary suspension of its content, considering that it violates basic principles of competition, company sources said.
In addition to this measure, Orange has also denounced the agreement before the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) and has addressed the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and the Information Society on four occasions, the last time last week, to ask it to intervene.
Orange believes that the agreement reduces competition and future investments, by turning Yoigo into "an assistant to Telefónica". "It virtually eliminates Yoigo from the market and turns it into a distribution channel for Telefónica's fixed products, while helping Telefónica achieve network synergies, moving sites and being able to sell them to third parties," says the company.
The company expects that the precautionary measures, whose resolution period if there are no requirements is between two or three months, will be resolved as soon as possible and will not be postponed as a result of the entry into operation of the National Competition Market Commission (CNMC).
Regarding the CNMC, Orange considers that the new body should study separately the complaints before the CMT and CNC, that is, address them in their regulatory and competition chambers, and not as a single file. If the macro-regulator does not fulfill its function, the company will go to the European courts.
The haste demanded by Orange is due to the fact that Telefónica already offers since last Friday, thanks to its agreement with Yoigo, 4G services, while Yoigo is expected to launch its new offer at the beginning of October, which will bear the name of Yoigo-Fusion, which accounts for the level of coordination between this company and the hegemonic operator.
PRICE COORDINATION.This harmony between the companies can be such that, says Orange, "there will be a coordination of prices" or at least "a restricted capacity on the part of Yoigo to set prices." Yoigo will be dedicated to "selling Telefónica products", while extending up to six years and against the spirit of the norm its national roaming agreements with the hegemonic operator, says Orange.
In the opinion of the company directed by Jean Marc Vignolles, Telefónica "instrumentalizes" through its agreement to Yoigo "to harm other actors such as Orange". The former will have more capacity to expand its fiber optic network, which diminishes Orange's interest in deploying its own networks. "When we get to a site, the market will be more devastated," lament its managers.
"Telefónica is using competitors in the market to harm others" and favors some companies to "harm structural competitors." In this way, "it eliminates" the ground that Orange and Vodafone had gained from the first operator, which will now be able to enjoy the 4G frequencies in frequencies of 1,800 Mhz of Yoigo.
COMPLAINT TO THE CMT.In the complaint to the CMT, Orange asks for the temporary paralysis of the offers between Yoigo and Telefónica until it is ensured that the other operators can replicate the offer under similar conditions. It also asks that the conditions that Telefónica gives in its ADSL offers are not discriminatory.
As for the letters sent to the Ministry of Industry, it requests that the agreement be investigated and denounces that Telefónica could be accessing the spectrum of Yoigo without this company intervening, to the point that the first calculates and invoices the number of megabytes taken in the network without the second knowing it precisely, orange executives say.
