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The Italian Communications Authority launched on 19 November 2009 an informative review concerning the “Guarantees for consumers and the protection of the competition with reference to VoIP voice services from mobile network and to peer to peer traffic” which will last 120 days. This review is aimed at ascertaining the technical, economic and legal aspects concerning the provision of such services and the compliance of mobile operators strategies limiting their use with the applicable legal framework.
In particular, according to the consultation paper, with reference to:
- consumer protection issues: the Authority will review whether discriminatory conducts damaging specific categories of users took place; while in relation to
- the protection of competition: the Authority will review the relationships between network operators and service providers to verify whether any strategy limiting the competition in this market took place.
VoIP services have been regulated in Italy back in 2006, but despite of the initial offer of VoIP services by a number of new operators, subsequently most of these operators faced difficulties in making their offers attractive for Italian users. Also, another issue in this sector was that the Italian Communications Authority has not published yet the protocol of interconnection for the so called “nomadic VoIP numbers” i.e. numbers allowing users to make and receive calls at any termination point on the Italian territory. Therefore, VoIP services can currently be offered only through numbers that can be used within a specific district.
This informative review might be the first step towards an increase of the offer of VoIP services in Italy.
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