Communiqué de presse

ART submits to the Conseil de la concurrence its analysis of the geographic call termination markets on alternative networks

Paris, 21 March 2005

Autorité de régulation des télécommunications (ART) is submitting today to the French competition Authority (Conseil de la Concurrence) its analysis of the wholesale market for call termination to geographic numbers on the individual markets of the various alternative local loop operators.

ART first submitted its analysis to a public consultation on 17 January of this year. It has since completed the analysis, taking into account all the comments received from players.

The analysis made public on 9 July and 21 December 2004 covering the retail and wholesale fixed telephony markets, covered only the wholesale call termination services on fixed networks. This new analysis completes the previous one since it covers call termination on networks other than that of France Telecom.

  • What is call termination to fixed geographic numbers?
  •  

The term "call termination" designates

the call routing services provided by a local loop operator (LLO) to other operators in order to allow them to establish telephone calls to the LLO’s subscribers, by connecting their network to that of the LLO. Because of the direction of the call being routed, we say that the LLO "terminates" the calls to its subscribers. "Fixed geographic numbers" designate the 10-digit numbers with the format 0Z AB PQ MC DU which are currently used primarily to identify the end users of fixed telephone service.

LLO’s have to purchase call termination services from their competitors in order to allow their users to call other users connected to the networks of these operators. Conversely, LLOs sell their own call termination services to their competitors so that their subscribers can receive calls from subscribers connected to other networks.

  • The primary measures proposed by ART
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Following the completion of its analysis, ART suggests declaring that the call termination services to the geographic numbers provided by each alternative LLO on its own network constitute a relevant market under the Post and Electronic Communications Code and the Framework Directive.

ART also suggests stating that each LLO exercises significant influence (or "significant market power") on the relevant market for call termination to the geographic numbers on its own network.

Finally, ART suggests concluding that it is necessary and proportionate to impose the following obligations on each of these powerful operators:

- to provide call termination and related services
- to provide call termination services under non-discriminatory conditions
- to publish the primary pricing conditions offered to third parties
- to inform ART of any new interconnection or access agreement regarding the provision of geographic call termination services or related access services, or of any modification to any such existing agreement
- to avoid practicing excessive pricing


Linked documents

The text of the analysis submitted by ART to the Conseil de la concurrence is available for downloading ( pdf    version  )


Public players comments fr

Players
Comments to download
- ADP Télécom
- L’AFORS
- Cégétel
- Colt Télécommunications France
- Free SAS
- France Télécom
- Neuf Télécom
- Télé 2 France
- UPC Broadband France
 
- All comments
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