Slovenian Network Files Complaint

Last Friday, Slovenia's GSM network, Vega filed a complaint with the Office of Competition Protection regarding allegations of abuse of a dominant position by Slovenia's largest mobile operator Mobitel. In the complaint Vega claims that with such a market share, certain of Mobitel's practices represent an abuse of a dominant position, the most obvious of them being the pricing difference between calls within the Mobitel network and calls to other operators. "There is no economic foundation for this differential," claims the general director of Vega Julien Coustaury, "It is an abuse of a dominant position with only one goal : to retain the market share at the expense of financial returns to the shareholders" said Coustaury. Similar practices have been ruled out by regulators in other EU countries.

In the filing Vega reports breaches of the Competition Limitation Prevention Act that sets boundaries for dominant market players. The limit of 40% set in the law, Vega claims, is by far exceeded by Mobitel. It therefore has a dominant position and must follow stricter regulations in order to avoid abuse of this market advantage. "The Office should" the report reads "require Mobitel to immediately cease with its illegal actions that represent abuse of its dominant position in the Slovenian market, and specifically, to remove the differential between on-net and off-net tariffs"

The Office now has up to two months to reply with the final ruling having to be issued by July 16.

A similar complaint has already been filed at the Agency for Telecommunications, Broadcasting and Post (ATRP) a few weeks ago, with a ruling expected early July."

Posted to the site on 20th May 2003