EU: Probe questions telco giants in alleged sluggish Internet scheme

The European Commission is reportedly investigating some of the EU’s largest telecommunications operators over dominance abuse allegations, specifically to probe whether the companies colluded to slow Internet speeds for their rivals.

According to reports, the onetime monopolies, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefonica, still control much of their prospective nations’ Internet infrastructure. They carry Web traffic for their rivals and lease those networks to other Internet providers.

Accusations claim the companies deliberately slowed Internet speeds for those rivals that use their infrastructure, however.

Offices of the telecommunications companies were raided by EU authorities last July, say reports, in efforts “to make sure that these companies were not abusing a dominant position b degrading the quality or limiting the speed of third-party content, for example to favor their own content,” announced European Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.

The probe was announced at a conference on London on Monday.

The investigation followed complaints lodged with the regulator by Cogent Communications Group Inc., a US-based Internet provider whose customers use the telco companies’ networks.

According to Cogent Communications, the firms in question limit downloading capacity and fail to streamline their connections to the quality adequate for Cogent’s customers.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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