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Telecommunications giant Swisscom is to allow Sunrise and Salt to share their network at lower prices. The price reductions will be retroactive for the years 2013 to 2016. They will cost tens of millions of francs.
It is booming on the Swiss telecommunications market. The Federal Communications Commission, Comcom, decided that between 2013 and 2016, Swisscom had asked too much of its competitors, Salt and Sunrise, to share the use of their networks. He must now reimburse the competition for the damage he suffered – that's about tens of millions of francs.
For some services, the authorities retroactively set the price at 80% lower than that of Swisscom! Conversely, this means that it has sometimes required five times too much for performance. More specifically, in this case, the leased lines, that is to say guaranteed transmission capacities between two sites.
The lion's share of the amount now due is the last kilometer of the homes, which Salt and Sunrise also rent to Swisscom. Prices were between 10 and 25% too high, decided the Comcom. In the field of cable sheaths, which offers Swisscom the competition, Comcom had no complaints.
"Have provisions formed"
Swisscom is currently analyzing injunctions and determining whether they should be referred to the Federal Administrative Court for fundamental contentious issues. She wrote this in a press release this morning.
A spokesperson concretized the financial impact of LOOK for 2013-2016: "This is a small annual double-digit amount." At four years and at least 10 million francs a year, this represents a minimum of 40 million euros. Sunrise paid too much to Swisscom.
The spokesman for Swisscom continued: "On this basis, Swisscom has established provisions." In German: Swisscom knew what it was doing. She did the price calculations according to the method that had given her the most and hoped to draw from it. But the competition is now complaining to Comcom – successfully.
The question now is whether and in what form Salt and Sunrise customers will benefit from the financial rain. Upon request, Sunrise would like to take a little time to read: "We are evaluating the decision, which is several hundred pages long, and we are not commenting on it during the current call period," which takes 30 days. Salt has not yet responded to a request.
Maybe they do not even know it themselves – the comcom had informed everyone involved last night only.
Here, the dominant position is desired
Why is Swisscom offering such services to its competitors? Although in most cases a dominant position of a sole proprietorship is not desirable, it makes sense in this case. Finally, it would be inefficient if, in addition to Swisscom, Salt and Sunrise also operate an infrastructure on the last mile.
According to the Telecommunications Act, Swisscom is obliged to offer certain services to competitors at prices that are appropriate to the costs. The problem has now become what is called "cost-oriented".
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