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Spain: Unregulated texting prices lead to $159M fine for three mobile giants

By  |  January 4, 2013

Spain’s competition authority the CNC has fined mobile network operators a total of $159 million for overpriced texting charges. Movistar, Vodafone Spain and Orange Espana were found to have abused their dominant positions in the market and cited to hold monopoly positions in SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia messaging service) termination service in each of their networks. The CNC noted that the SMS termination services sector went unregulated between 2000 and 2009, a period of time investigated by the authority; during that time, the CNC found, the three corporations were able to price the termination of texting service at levels as high as they wanted, leading to higher SMS and MMS prices for consumers.

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