PRESS RELEASE

THE ICA IMPOSED A 28 MILLION FINE ON TELECOM ITALIA AND OTHER SIX COMPANIES

The Italian Competition Authority imposed a cumulative fine of 28 million Euros on seven companies - Alpitel, Ceit Impianti, Sielte, Sirti, Site, Valtellina and Telecom Italia - for an anti-competitive agreement infringing Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

In fact, the ICA found that from 5^th July 2012 to 1^st February 2013 the fined Companies agreed to coordinate their economic offers and contractual terms in relation to the tenders for the selection of suppliers made by the companies Wind and Fastweb; and in relation to information regarding the supply of corrective maintenance services (also known as assurance services). In particular, this activity is essential to restore the normal telecommunication services in case of technical issues reported by final customers or failures of the network, to which Telecom gives access to the Other Licensed Operators (OLO).

According to the ICA’s opinion, the anti-competitive conducts consisted in the agreed coordination of contractual economic terms and information transmitted to the regulator, with the aim to limit competition and prevent competing operators from providing other ancillary technical services. Moreover, these behaviours were put in place during the starting period of these kind of services, causing the relevant market to become very concentrated.

In particular, the investigation proved that the fined Companies had numerous meetings and contacts in order to agree on the economic offers to be submitted to Wind Telecomunicazioni and Fastweb for the end-to-end corrective maintenance disaggregate service; and, in general, to identify a single communication plan concerning the conditions for supplying the service. Finally, the ICA found that the investigated conducts were capable of altering OLO’s and stakeholders’ incentives, prejudicing market competition.

Rome, 23 December 2015