On 11 May 2004, the Telekom-Control-Kommission (TKK) of the Austrian National Regulatory Authority RTR published a short statement, indicating that it had identified operators with Significant Market Power (SMP) in application of the new Telecommunications Act, on markets that are closely aligned with those listed in the European Commission’s Recommendation on Relevant Markets Susceptible to Ex-Ante Regulation.
The SMP identifications concern the market for voice call termination on individual mobile networks (Market 16 of the EC Recommendation), the -minimum set- retail leased line market (Market 7 of the EC Recommendation) and the wholesale market for terminating segments of leased lines (Market 13 of the EC Recommendation).
Perhaps more significantly, the statement implies that NO operators will be declared SMP for wholesale mobile access and call origination (Market 15 of the EC Recommendation) and on the market for trunk segments of leased lines (Market 14 of the EC Recommendation).
These SMP identifications follow the exercise of market definition, which was already completed in 2003 (for 16 markets), by means of the Telecommunications Market Ordinance (TKMVO 2003) which entered into force on 17 October 2003.
The formal SMP designation, and the selection of applicable regulatory obligations (“remedies”) has not yet occurred, but the TKK has communicated the following findings relating to mobile markets (except Market 17 – international roaming, on which a decision will be made in co-operation with the regulatory authorities from other EU Member States):
- All currently active mobile telephony operators (Mobilkom Austria AG & Co KG, T-Mobile Austria GmbH, One GmbH, Tele.ring Service GmbH and Hutchison 3G Austria GmbH) are considered to have SMP, on their respective markets for “termination in the individual mobile telephony network”.
- There is effective competition in the market for “access and origination in the public mobile telephony network” and none of the operators is therefore identified as having SMP.
With regard to leased lines markets the TKK draws the following conclusions:
- Telekom Austria AG has SMP for both the “retail market for the minimum set of leased lines up to 2 Mbit/s” and the “wholesale market for terminating leased line segments”.
- The “wholesale market for leased line trunk segments” is deemed to be competitive, and hence no operator is identified as having SMP.
T-REGS Note: SMP designations by National Regulatory Authorities are subject to a veto power of the European Commission.