The European Commission duly warned France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom AG that they will have to alter the scope and nature of their proposed Atlas alliance and the Phoenix extension with Sprint Corp to offer global data transmission services to corporate customers if it is to win European Community approval. The Atlas venture appears to relate mainly to the provision of domestic data comunications services to companies operating in France or Germany, the Commission said. The parent companies will not compete with each other on those markets, competition is likely to be eliminated or at least seriously restricted, it said. Such fears could be allayed were the two to conclude their proposed strategic alliance with Sprint, Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert said, since this would internationalise the alliance. But he warned that the Phoenix leg of the alliance would not solve all competition problems, and reiterated his call for the German and French governments to commit to early opening up of their telecommunications infrastructure to competition. Van Miert said it could take the Commission up to four months to take a final decision but he hoped for a quicker outcome if the companies and the public authorities co-operated. Separately, the new French government said that it was considering a partial privatisation of France Telecom, but had not yet made any decision, Reuter reports from Paris.
