The Italian Competition Authority targets an alleged cartel in the telecommunication sector

In the case I820 the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has recently opened an antitrust investigation into a price collusion arrangement allegedly put in place by the major telecommunications operators.
The ICA decided to open the investigation on the basis of the information it collected regarding the following facts. In 2015 the major mobile phone operators TIM, Vodafone and Wind Tre reduced the deadline for topping up rechargeable SIM cards from one month to 28 days. Later the same decision was made by a major fixed phone operator, Fastweb. Unsurprisingly, these pricing practices wet met with criticism by consumer associations that feared disguised price increases.
Tim, Wind and Vodafone were then fined by the ICA for unfair commercial practices. And by the Decree Law no. 148/2017 the Italian lawmaker laid down the obligation for the telecommunication operators for billing their customers on a monthly basis. The Italian Telecommunication Authority then released guidelines on monitoring the compliance of operators with the new billing system introduced by the Decree Law no. 148/2017.
Over the months of January and February 2018, Tim, Vodafone, Fastweb and Wind Tre sent a letter to their customers informing them about the new monthly billing system with the result that the yearly expense would be divided into 12 invoices instead of 13 invoices as under the previous billing system. All the operators made it clear that the new billing system would result in an 8,6% increase in the annual costs for customers.
The ICA identified the relevant product markets in the retail market for the provision of telecommunication mobile services and the retail markets for the provision for telecommunication fixed services. The ICA feared that the parties coordinated their commercial policies. The letters sent by the parties were similarly drafted. The circumstance that all the letters referred to the concept of annual costs and to the reduction of the number of invoices, though these issues were not considered in the AGCOM Guidelines, were seen by the ICA as indicia of an anti-competitive conduct. In this way, the parties agreed to increase their prices by eliminating any price competition among them. The ICA also believed that the parties coordinated their commercial strategies at the meetings convened by a professional trade association (Asstelecomunicazioni).
Considering the oligopolistic nature of the relevant product markets, it may not be easy for the ICA to establish that the contested conducts of the parties infringed competition.





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