Internet access and value-added services provider Servicom SA has announced it is to take legal action against Telefonica de Espana SA, claiming that the use the national carrier is making of its InfoVia on-line service infringes the principle of free competition. Astel, the Association of Telecommunications Operators and Service Companies, which includes Airtel SA, France Telecom, Sprint Corp and British Telecommunications Plc, has swiftly added its voice in support of Servicom. Servicom has gone to the European Commission’s Defense of Competition Service in Brussels to complain that Telefonica is abusing its dominant position in the market by allowing its TSAI and Teleline subsidiary companies to offer users connection to the Internet via InfoVia, placing the remaining providers at a clear disadvantage, since they would need to make enormous investment to achieve the same degree of efficiency. Servicom further claims that Telefonica is tagging value-added services onto InfoVia, thereby transgressing the ministerial order that defines the InfoVia model as a carrier service, which allows simple, low-cost access to all providers of value-added Internet services. Nevertheless, the Internet Users Association in Spain believes Servicom has gone too far by calling for the cautionary paralysis of InfoVia, since such a measure would affect 100,000 end users and some 500 Internet access providers, many of which are small businesses that would not survive the suspension of InfoVia. The Association commented that Although we are all in favor of any initiative taken to further free competition that also keeps a watchful eye on the quality of service and price setting, action to curb monopolistic tendencies cannot go ahead w ithout taking account of how the measures will affect the end user.
