Last year the European Commission requested information from Deutsche Telecom, France Télécom, Telefónica, Vodafone and Telecom Italia as well as from the GSMA. It was concerned that standards for future mobile communications services shouldn’t be used by mobile operators in Europe as part of a strategy to close other companies down.
However, the standardisation work that the five companies had been cooperating on has bow been transferred to the GSMA and other industry associations, resulting in the European Commission closing its preliminary investigation.
In a statement, the EC said “The Commission welcomes this transfer, which allows more stakeholder participation. It is a positive step that reduces the risk of standard setting work affecting competition negatively.”
The European Commission notes that it will continue to watch how mobile telecoms standardisation processes evolve.