After a return to monthly
billing, Italy's antitrust authority (AGCM) on Friday cited TIM,
Wind Tre, Vodafone, Fastweb and Sky for "not respecting norms on
clarity, transparency and completeness of information".
It said the firms must clear up with users that "eventual"
cost increases "are exclusively the consequence of choices by
operators" and not of the return to monthly bills.
AGCM also started "new sanctions proceedings" for those who
did not comply with the ruling to make monthly billings.
Telecoms giants TIM, Wind, Vodafone and Fastweb on Thursday
reacted to an antitrust billing probe against telecoms firms by
saying they had never carried out anti-competitive practices.
In a statement TIM said it "reiterates that it always
operated respecting the norms in force and ensuring full
cooperation to all sector authorities and the maximum
transparency to its clients".
TIM "categorically excludes that there was any coordination
of its commercial strategy with other operators also with regard
to the ways and timescales for complying with the law which
imposes all the market to adopt, by April 5 2018, the monthly
billing schedule".
Wind said that "Wind Tre, in the course of today's inspection
by the antitrust authority, supplied, with the utmost
collaboration, all the information requested. The company
confirms it fully respected the dispositions of the law and it
has nothing to do with any anti-competitive practice".
Vodafone told ANSA "it is convinced of the correctness of its
operations and is actively collaborating with the antitrust
authority" in the billing probe.
Fastweb issued a similar statement.
Earlier AGCM said it had opened a probe into TIM, Vodafone,
Fastweb, Wind Tre and sector association
Assotelecomunicazioni-Asstel to see if they coordinated their
commercial strategy to make billing on a monthly basis with
"almost identical methods".
At the same time, the antitrust watchdog said, the companies
had allegedly hiked the monthly bills "to distribute overall
annual spending over 12 months rather than 13".
Finance police on Thursday conducted inspections on behalf of
Italy's antitrust authority at the offices of the country's main
fixed-line and mobile telecommunications operators, sources
said.
The inspections were related to suspicions of
competition-limiting agreements among the operators and the
issue of invoicing customers on a 28-day basis or on a monthly
one, the sources said.
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