In the summer of 2000 the main Italian telecommunications company, Telecom Italia S.p.A., former State –owned corporation and monopolist of the telecommunication system and now private-owned and no longer the only tlc operator in Italy, decided to merge, through an important subsidiary, SEAT PAGINE GIALLE S.p.A, active mainly in the field of advertising (the so-called and widely known "yellow pages"), with an other company, the Cecchi Gori Communications S.p.A., which runs two non-crypted television channels (TMC and TMC2).
Such a merger raised a lot of issues, part of which have been dealt with in a decision by the Italian antitrust Authority. The Authority (decision C/4158 of the 23 of January 2001) recognized that the merger could have caused many problems to competition in different relevant markets and focused especially on the danger of Telecom acquiring a dominant position in the new market resulting from the interaction of telecommunications and television, for instance, the
