ARCEP adopts its decision on regulation governing SMS call termination.

Paris, 27 July 2010

After having received a favourable opinion from the Competition Authority and taken account of the feedback received from the European Commission and the sector's stakeholders on 16 July of this year, on 22 July ARCEP adopted the final decision on its analysis of the market for wholesale SMS call termination on mobile networks in France.

In this decision the Authority sets the maximum SMS call termination fee that can be billed to other operators. It will eventually decrease to one eurocent per delivered SMS, for all mobile operators.

With this decision, ARCEP is following through on the regulation initiated in mainland France back in 2006, which has proven beneficial to consumers, and is extending it to the overseas départements. The Authority intends on hereby introducing terms of competition that will bring a decrease in the unit price of SMS in retail markets, and on stimulating the development of high-volume offers in all market segments in both mainland and overseas France.

ARCEP is also working to establish a situation of more balanced relations between mobile operators and SMS content aggregators.

In keeping with this decision, the Authority will be hosting multilateral talks with the sector's players to enable the emergence of technical and contractual terms for SMS interconnection that will help spur innovation in the underlying retail market.