A Paris court ruled yesterday that France Telecom could continue marketing its WAP enabled mobile phones only if it informed customers that the phones were programmed to link up automatically to its own web portal and gave them the ability to ‘unlock’ their WAP phones so they could log on to another internet portal.

Wappup, an ISP, and the French mobile internet association (AFIM) had accused France Telecom of using its large share of the telephone market to gain an unfair entrance into the ISP market.

France Telecom’s sales of its WAP phones if the company fails to comply with the court order by 13th June.

A spokesman for France Telecom warned that the company could not guarantee high quality WAP services to users who switched portal because its phones were configured to use its portal.

Yesterday, France Telecom also announced that it would pay Vodafone AirTouch £31 billion to purchase Orange, the UK mobile phone network.

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