20 January 2003
Autorité de régulation des télécommunications (ART) has ruled on a dispute opposing the company LDCOM and France Telecom, regarding certain pricing levels and technical aspects of the wholesale ADSL Connect offer.
For ART, the primary purpose of ADSL collection offers is to allow operators to compete with France Telecom on the retail market by completing or extending their ADSL coverage in areas where they have not installed their own ADSL equipment. This allows them to unbundle the local loop.
In an opinion dated 18 July 2002, ART established equitable pricing and technical conditions allowing competing operators to purchase ADSL traffic from France Telecom at the regional level.
In its current decision, ART confirms its July opinion for the regional level, and refines the pricing and technical conditions to allow widely deployed operators to collect traffic at a lower level on France Telecom's network, since collection points are located in each département and in major urban areas.
By collecting traffic closer to the end user, competing operators obtain the means to set themselves apart from their competitors and to help them make best use of the high-speed networks they installed in the past to collect telephone traffic.
