The Danish regulatory authority has withdrawn the draft measures (market definition, SMP assessment, proposed remedies) in Case DK 2005/0171 which related to call termination on individual public telephone networks provided at a fixed location (Market 9).
The draft measures seemed to include dial-up Internet access in market 9, this appears to have been a stumbling block. The regulatory authority explained to T-REGS today that it only appears as if all dial-up Internet traffic has been included in market 9, in fact only that part of dial-up traffic was included in market 9 which is technically indistinguishable from regular fixed telephony traffic.
Some dial-up Internet traffic occurs via standard 8-digit geographic telephone numbers. It is virtually impossible to distinguish this traffic from regular telephony traffic and the Danish regulator commented in its filing that this kind of (indistinguishable) dial-up traffic would end up being included in market 9. This may have not been entirely clear from the documents filed, it seemed as if all dial-up Internet traffic had been included in market 9. The Danish regulatory authority will revise its draft measures in order to enhance justifications and to provide clarifications in this matter.
A notice, published by the European Commission, can be accessed by clicking here.
For detailed background information on this notification, please refer to a previous T-REGS news item.