EC battles over phone connection fees with Estonian Competition Board

TALLINN - The European Commission made an unusually harsh statement, accusing the Estonian Competition Board of the wish to cause lasting damages to consumers in connection with connecting fees of mobile calls, LETA/Postimees writes.

EC wishes to make the connecting fees cost-based starting next year and in essence rule out the possibility of mobile phone operators earning a profit from connecting calls. The connecting fees in Estonia would fall by around seven times, to 1 cent.

The Estonian Competition Board, however, wants to implement a connecting fee of 3.89 cents a minute starting next year, which would be by nearly four times more than what the Commission wants. "The European Commission has suspended the proposal of the Estonian Competition Board to implement some of the highest mobile phone call termination fees (the same as connecting fees – ed.) in the European Union," the Commission said in a press release.

EC deputy president Neelie Kroes said that "We cannot tolerate the situation that some operators get an unfair advantage to demand from consumers excessively high prices because of too high termination fees. Consumers in the entire EU should be able to equally benefit from low fees that were agreed upon in 2009."

The Competition Board managed to irritate the European Commission even further by deciding that starting the middle of the next year, it won't inform the Commission of intermediate decisions that implement connecting fees in Estonia. This means, as the Commission put it, that the connecting fees would be implemented in Estonia irrespective of whether they correspond to EU legal acts or not.

Allegedly the plans of the Competition Board were giving in to wishes of mobile operators. Since smaller operators benefit more from the connecting fees, Elisa and Tele2 are more opposed to their freefall.

Competition Board electronic communications department head Rivo Mets said that the board has not yet made a decision what to do now, after the Commission's decision. He explained that the Board had contradicted the Commission because otherwise mobile operators would cut their investments.