Stampa

INFOSTRADA/TELECOM ITALIA - TECNOLOGIA ADSL


PRESS RELEASE



PRESS RELEASE
Investigation of Telecom Italia's ASDL services

At its meeting on 17 November the Competition Authority, instituted an investigation into Telecom Italia, following a complaint from the Infostrada company, alleging an abuse of dominant position on the market for telecommunications services using ASDL technology access.
The conduct complained of, which will form the basis of the investigation, has to do with Telecom Italia’s policy for marketing of ADSL access services on an exclusive basis within its range of data services offered to companies and Service Providers. ASDL is an innovative technology which provides high-speed Internet access through the normal telephone land line which can be used simultaneously for voice telephony.
If it transpires that Telecom Italia is marketing telecommunications services in conjunction with ASDL access technology on an exclusive basis, this could constitute an abuse of dominant position, prohibited by section 3 of the Competition Act, Law no.287/90.
Telecom Italia occupies a dominant position on the access market as the de facto monopolist for the supply of direct urban circuit links and as the public switched network infrastructure manager; it is alleged that, this being the case, it uses one type of connection for its own corporate customers which is considerably cheaper than other types of access technologies, such as direct circuits, which it makes available to competing telecommunications operators. It is therefore alleged that Telecom Italia's policy could weaken the competitive capacity of other operators, seriously hampering competition on the data transmission and Internet access services markets.
Furthermore, if the commercial conduct of Telecom Italia is designed to strengthen the dominant position it already occupies on the access market it could constitute other forms of abuse by substantially hampering the development of the communications services markets which may become available in the future thanks to the possibilities opened up by the availability of services based on competitive broadband access offerings such as the ADSL technology-based service.

Rome, 25 November 1999