Spain: €5 million fine on Telefónica over “false malfunctions”

Spanish competition regulators CNMC have fined telephone operator Telefónica de España with €5 million euros over a serious violation of the country’s Telecommunications law after the company was found in violation of the OBA Access Offer agreement, likely causing rivals several million euros in losses and blows to their public image.

The Access to Paid Coupling Offer treaty sets a series of obligations between Telefónica and its competitors when one hires landline infrastructure to provide broadband and telephone services to customers. The CNMC has determined that between January 2014 and October 2015 Telefónica failed to tend to a large percentage of reported malfunctions in landlines operated by rivals, marking most of these maintenance requests as “false malfunctions”.

Between 53% and 78% of all the false malfunctions reported by Telefónica are now thought to have been mislabelled, as determined by CNMC investigators. The criteria for declaring a false malfunction is extremely narrow, applying only to a handful of cases. Telefónica was also found to have failed to carry out basic confirmation procedures for most of the cases reviewed.

Full Content: CNMC

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