The European Commission’s approval of telecommunications industry alliances – particularly the one between Sprint Corp and France Telecom and the Deutsche Bundespost Telekom will be linked to how quickly European governments open their phone markets to competition, Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert said: he told the Wall Street Journal he didn’t want a few big brothers able to do anything they want; he said the British Telecommunications Plc-MCI Communications Corp pact was passed because it involved only the open British and trans-Atlantic telephone markets; and Industrial Affairs Commissioner Martin Bangemann said on Friday he would submit a new proposal soon aimed at applying the Open Network Provision to the speech telephony sector, adding that studies being carried out by the Commission in Sweden and Finland showed that telecommunications liberalisation would create jobs and would, rather than excluding outlying areas, promote local firms in those areas.
