Critique on collective dominance ruling in the Irish mobile market
Frontier (London) presented a paper on the Collective dominance in the Irish mobile market at a conference on Mobile Regulation and Competition Law in Brussels. Dan Elliott, Director in Frontier's Utility & Telecommunications Practices analysed the Irish Communications Regulator's (ComReg) recent ruling on Vodafone's & O2's collective dominance in the market for wholesale access and call origination in Ireland.
In particular, Dan explored the basis for ComReg's assessment of dominance by looking at whether the underlying market was conducive to collective dominance (the AirTours test), searching for evidence of coordinated effects in the retail market, and investigating into inferences that can be drawn from coordinated effects in the wholesale market. Dan concluded that ComReg's analysis was not convincing and lacks an objective standard of proof.
During the course of the conference, Dan further sat on an expert panel discussing the prospects for Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs).
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