The Finnish regulatory authority FICORA has today confirmed draft market review decisions on which the European Commission's Article 7 Task Force had expressed its formal opinion at the end of last year (published on 5 Jan 2004).

FICORA has chosen to maintain its position on mobile call termination (i.e. the limitation of the remedies to the termination of calls originating on mobile networks in Finland or originating abroad), and has come to the conclusion that it is not able to "disapply national legislation which contravenes Community law" as the European Commission had openly encouraged it to do.

The article of national legislation in question is Article 43, Section 4 of the Communications Market Act.

FICORA also maintained differential remedies, e.g. cost-orientation applied to some SMP operators but not to others, in the area of mobile call termination (Market 16) and also in the area of fixed call termination (Market 9) in spite of the fact that the European Commission had commented negatively on this.

The full detail (numerous documents, in Finnish/Swedish only) of the obligations imposed on individual operators can be accessed by clicking here.