ARTICLE · 06 OCTOBER 1995
Regulation of Telecommunications - Mobile Telephone Antitrust Dispute
Italian telecommunication services have been supplied, until recently, solely by government-owned telephone companies. However, a private company, the Omnitel consortium, owned by Olivetti S.p.A., Bell Atlantic and other partners, recently joined the government-owned, mobile telephone company, Telecom Italia Mobile S.p.A. ("TIM"), on the GSM market. As a condition to granting such access, the Italian government required Omnitel to pay an entrance fee of 750 billion Lire. TIM was not required to pay any entrance fee for its own mobile telephone operations.
On October 4, 1995, the European Commission formally approved the opinion of its Competition Commissioner, Mr. Karl Van Miert, that the fee requirement described above, as applied solely to the private competitor of a State company, is in violation of European Union antitrust law. The Italian Government has argued that TIM was already in possession of a license for mobile telephone services, and thus was exempt from the fee.
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