Paris, 17th March 2006
Autorité de Régulation des Communications électroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) is submitting for public consultation its draft decision stipulating the technical and pricing conditions of the wholesale line rental remedy imposed on France Télécom. At the same time, it is submitting its draft decision to the European Commission and to the national regulatory authorities (NRA).
Public consultation on the draft decision and notification
On 27 September, ARCEP adopted a decision regarding its analysis of the fixed telephony market. In this decision, it identified France Telecom as having significant power on these markets and imposed a number of obligations on the operator.
Under these obligations, France Telecom is required to publish a reference offer of wholesale line rental in order to allow alternative operators to sell a complete telephone service to their customers. Under such an offer, these operators will be able to offer their customers a telephone service including the access to the telephone network, services traditionally linked to their line rental (caller identification, etc.), all interpersonal communications and communications to special numbers (like toll-free numbers or premium rate services ones) and to dial-up Internet. As a consequence, customers only connected to France Telecom’s network will no longer be required to pay their telephone line rental to France Telecom.
ARCEP had announced that it would stipulate the technical and pricing conditions of such an offer in a later date decision.
This is the point of the draft decision that ARCEP is submitting today for public consultation in order to receive players’ comments. The planned measures are the fruit of discussions conducted under the aegis of ARCEP since March 2005 between sector players and France Telecom on the technical and pricing specifications of such an access offer.
ARCEP is also submitting this draft decision to the European Commission and to the other NRA.
Linked documents
The draft decision (pdf - 391KB) is available, in French, for downloading 
Comments must be sent to ARCEP by 18 April 2006, preferably by e-mail to: contact