The three French mobile operators – Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom -have been fined €534m for collusion between 1997 and 2003.
France’s competition commission (the “Conseil de la Concurrence”) ruled that they had acted against the best interests of consumers and the economy by sharing confidential information and agreeing on market shares.
Orange has been fined €256m, SFR €220m and Bouygues Telecom €58m. The latter was fined even though the company claims it suffered from the duopole Orange/SFR (currently 83% market share), which is partly true in my opinion in the sense that it did not benefit from the same advantages than other third entrants in Europe.
This is the first time a fine for collusion reaches such an amount.
The operators are likely to appeal the decisions and could benefit from the fact that there have been leaks in the press before the official announcement. Even though class actions do not really exist in France, carriers could also face further legal action from consumers. UFC Que choisir, an association defending consumers, estimates the damage up to 1.2 billion euros !!
This is really bad news for the French operators, because of the record amount of the fine (up to 3% of the turnover for Orange and SFR) and essentially because of the bad press resulting from this decision and the damage it will do to the operators’ credibility.
At least, this will be a good news for MVNOs. A very very nascent market in France (more than 100.000 subscribers for Tele 2 and around 130.000 for M6, the most successful players so far)…
So back to my post from the other day:
- if you kept your phone bills between 2000 and 2002 (I feel sorry for you if you had a prepay card…) and if you are very patient, cartelmobile.org (I love the name!) will help you to try to get your money back
- the stocks prices increased between 1.1% for Bouygues and up to 2.7% for Vivendi Universal. The reason: financial analysts had already anticipated the fine and expected even a higher amount due to leaks in the press.
- telcos still need lobbyists…Bouygues Telecom is asking Bruxelles to look at the roaming market. It is taking action against the Freemove alliance ! It is probably true the third player does not have much of the lucrative roaming market : Orange benefits from the calls of Telefonica, T-mobile and Tim (its parnters in the alliance) whereas SFR benefits from that of parent company Vodafone.
