Matthias Kurth, president of the regulatory authority REG-TP declared that “Essentially, we welcome new calling plans that give customers greater choice and lower rates, and have thus approved for instance DTAG’s AktivPlus and AktivPlus xxl discount tariffs in the past. This filing, however, is a departure from the acceptable framework and fails to heed the tried and tested principles of our approval practice, principles that have been affirmed by the courts.”
The regulatory authority has ruled that the monthly subscription fee of 4.22 Euro cmbined with a 10 cent per hour charge for national calls would not be sufficient to cover DTAG’s costs (taking into account an average usage rate). The price setting therefore constitutes a non-admissible rebate.
The rebate is considered to be harming competition. New entrant operators are not enabled to build similarly priced services on the basis of DTAG wholesale offers. The REG-TP has concluded from a brief study it had commissioned that agreeing the DTAG’s tariff proposal would result in an anti-competitive situation and an abusive price setting and has therefore declined to agree the tariff proposal.