AGCM

At its meeting on April 11th, 2018, the Italian Competition Authority confirmed the precautionary measures urgently adopted on March 21st, 2018, regarding the investigation launched last February, to ascertain the subsistence of an agreement restricting competition between TIM, Vodafone, Fastweb and Wind Tre. The main telephone operators through the category association Assotelecomunicazioni - Asstel also, would have coordinated their business strategy, related to the timing of the renewals and the invoicing of the offers on fixed and mobile telephone markets, following the introduction of the new regulatory obligations introduced by art. 19 quinquiesdecies of the Legislative Decree n. 148/2017 (converted from Law n. 172/2017).

At the outcome of ensuring to the Parties the right of defence - which was also carried out during the hearing before the Board on April 5th. -, the Italian Competition Authority considered well-founded prima facie the investigation hypothesis of a coordination between the Parties at the occasion of the re-modulation of the invoicing cycle in compliance with law 172/2017. In particular, the Parties would have almost simultaneously communicated to their customers that the invoicing for the offers and services would have been carried out on a monthly basis rather than every four weeks, providing also an increase of the monthly fee in order to distribute the total yearly expense on 12 months, instead of 13. Therefore, pending on the conclusion of the procedure and to avoid the occurrence of serious and irreparable damage both for the competition and in the end for the consumers, the Italian Competition Authority confirmed its own provision to adopt precautionary measures, according to which the operators must suspend the activation of the re-pricing, object of the contested agreement, and define their own services offer irrespective of their competitors.

Rome, 13 April 2018