Telecom Italia Fined $131 Million for Broadband Market Abuse

Italy's competition watchdog said on Friday it had fined former phone monopoly Telecom Italia (TIM) 116 million euros ($131 million) for abusing its dominant position in the broadband market in an attempt to obstruct the entrance of rivals. From a report: The Italian antitrust authority said in a statement that Telecom Italia had conducted a "premeditated anti-competition strategy" aimed at hindering its competitors' investments in ultra-fast broadband. The authority opened its investigation into TIM's superfast broadband rollout and wholesale pricing plans three years ago after TIM, then headed by Chief Executive Flavio Cattaneo, announced a plan, dubbed Cassiopea, to roll out fast broadband in so-called uneconomic areas. TIM had initially said it would not roll out broadband in areas where it could not guarantee a return on its investment, forcing Rome to step in with state subsidized tenders.

Standard practice in the U.S.

[TiberiusKirk]

If only the FTC had balls.

while being in Italy roaming didn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

When you arrive in Roma - one of the first things you see is a store from Tim to sell you a tourist GSM-card. Now i do understand why my smartphone wouldn't roam at all. The fine seems well deserved for me - and it may be the 10-fold. I'd like further investigation about this - why didn't the roaming work as was decided by the EU?

Abusive Responsibilities

[Tuxguin]

Corporations tend to have a fiduciary responsibility to behave abusively in a market if that enhances shareholder value. The same can be said of breaking the law...

Re: Abusive Responsibilities

[Åke Malmgren]

Some corporations act like the paperclip-maximizing AI from the thought experiment, but geared towards shareholder value.

Re:

[alvinrod]

Please find any corporate charter the includes breaking the law. This 131 million fine is money that shareholders no longer receive. How did this maximize their value?

This is a bit like making a similarly specious argument that because a sports team has a responsibility to win games, that they should poison the other team. No one with a hint of intelligence accepts such fallacious reasoning. Because if we're to accept what you say is true, then why aren't all other companies behaving as badly? Clearly th

Let me get this straight...

[CrimsonAvenger]

So, the evil monopolist said, back in the day, that it wouldn't do broadband in places where they'd lose money...

Then the government offers subsidies...

And only then did the evil monopolist decide to do broadband in those places where they'd lose money (of course, with the subsidies, they'd no longer be losing money).

I'm not seeing what the problem is, really. Money-losing proposition = don't, money-making = do...

Or was this a case of "the subsides were meant for your competition ONLY, you evil monopol

Re:

[hax 109]

It's explained in the article: TIM did not get the subsidies, a competitor did. TIM then decided, against their own statement of intent, to build their network in those unprofitable areas in order to deter the competitor from further attempts to get a foothold in the market. This strategy of announcing that a buildout isn't profitable without subsidies and then building in those unprofitable areas anyway, if a competitor gets the subsidies, is widely used by German Telekom too.