Vodafone Activities in Northern Cyprus Investigated

Cyprus's Commission for the Protection of Competition (CPC) says that it has started an investigation in relation to the activities of Vodafone Group in Cyprus in the field of mobile telephony and other related services.

The investigation seems to stem from the fact that Vodafone now owns Turkey's Telsim which also operates a GSM network in the contested Turkish Northern Cyprus. Vodafone paid some US$30 million for the operations in Northern Cyprus. Vodafone has a co-operation agreement with the Southern Cyprus phone company, CYTA, and commercial links between the two sides of the island can be subject to sanctions. Vodafone did give a pledge before the purchase of Telsim that it would not use the Vodafone brand in the Northern side however, so preserving the CYTA-Vodafone brand in the Southern side.

In the framework of the said ex officio investigation, the CPC requested data, information, clarifications, documents and other relevant material from the Vodafone Group of Companies, in relation to its activities in Cyprus.

The Vodafone Group of companies sent to the CPC documents and other data, as well as provided to it information and clarifications within the time period set by the CPC, which are currently being assessed by the Service of the CPC."

Posted to the site on 29th November 2006