The Commission has notified its inquiry to all of the UK’s network operators, Vodafone, BT Cellnet, Orange and One2One, and also to the telecoms watchdog Oftel. The original issues of concern have been made public to give all interested parties - including mobile phone users - an opportunity to put any further points to the Commission that they may wish to raise within the next ten days.
The Commission's initial investigation was whether the operators' termination charges are too high. These are fees that operators charge both to each other and to other telcos for terminating calls on their networks. It gives the following example:
"a peak rate national call over BT's network is currently 24p for three minutes, while the same call to a mobile network costs 60p, of which 39p is the termination charge."
The charges also relate to calls made from fixed landlines.
Late last month, the European Commission announced that it had sent a statement of objections to Dutch operator KPN, suspecting that it was abusing its dominant position for the termination of calls on its mobile network.
According to the European Commission, fixed to mobile termination rates in Europe can be ten times higher than the average charge for fixed to fixed interconnection. It observes that this results in undue barriers for newcomers to the market and high prices for consumers. It is anticipated that the European Commission soon will take action to force mobile operators across Europe to cut charges.