The Commission has notified its inquiry to all of the UK’s
network operators, Vodafone, BT Cellnet, Orange and One2One, and
also to the telecoms watchdog Oftel. The original issues of concern
have been made public to give all interested parties - including
mobile phone users - an opportunity to put any further points to
the Commission that they may wish to raise within the next ten
days.
The Commission's initial investigation was whether the
operators' termination charges are too high. These are fees that
operators charge both to each other and to other telcos for
terminating calls on their networks. It gives the following
example:
"a peak rate national call over BT's network
is currently 24p for three minutes, while the same call to a mobile
network costs 60p, of which 39p is the termination charge."
The charges also relate to calls made from fixed landlines.
Late last month, the European Commission announced that it had
sent a statement of objections to Dutch operator KPN, suspecting
that it was abusing its dominant position for the termination of
calls on its mobile network.
According to the European Commission, fixed to mobile
termination rates in Europe can be ten times higher than the
average charge for fixed to fixed interconnection. It observes that
this results in undue barriers for newcomers to the market and high
prices for consumers. It is anticipated that the European
Commission soon will take action to force mobile operators across
Europe to cut charges.
