French competition police crack down on telco big boys

NEWS The French competition, consumer and anti-fraud watchdog – the DGCCRF - has confirmed it has paid a visit to the country's three major mobile operators, Bouygues, Orange and SFR. While the body wouldn't go into more detail, it seems that it was investigating the companies following a complaint from a consumer group, UFC-Que Choisir, against the companies in February 2002, reported the economic daily Les Echos on Friday. The French edition of silicon.com sister site ZDNet received confirmation of the operation by the competition authorities but no further details of the operation were given. While Bouygues and Orange maintained a stance of "no comment", SFR were unavailable for even that. However, they did confirm to Les Echos that the DGCCRF investigators were on their premises. The raids seem to be taking place as part of an enquiry led by the Competition Council, following a complaint of 'illicit agreement and collective dominant position' filed against the three operators by the consumer association, UFC-Que Choisir. The association took the action on 22 February, citing the billing methods uniquely applied by the companies at the time - namely, users were billed in an initial set one minute block, followed by successive blocks of 30 seconds. "We noticed that the operators adopted an identical system… while it wasn't technically justified," explained Romain Garnier, lawyer for the group. Since the complaint was filed, the association has already scored several points against this type of billing and has succeeded in getting the operators to implement billing by the second. But while on the face of it the initial charge of running as a cartel still hasn't been judged, this type of search normally forms part of DGCCRF investigations, said Garnier. According to him, the association's complaint and the investigators' visit are in all likelihood linked. However, he has no further information on the result of the raids. Estelle Dumout writes for ZDNet France. Translation by Jo Best.