Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Spain and Germany: margin squeeze remedies and regulatory holidays

Spain: Telefonica in 2008 lost a margin squeeze case, and received a record fine - much higher than Deutsche Telekom (Germany) and France Telecom-Wanadoo (France). Is this justified? The CJEU upheld the DT fine in October 2010.
Germany: the regulator granted DT a regulatory holiday to deploy its VDSL network - was this unfair on competitors? Did it fragment the European market? The CJEU thought so.