The Competition Tribunal dismissed a lawsuit by the National Economic Prosecutor’s office against the three mobile telephone companies of the country (Movistar, Entel and Claro). The Tribunal considered that, even though these companies have joint market power regarding access to the necessary services and infrastructure for the operation of Mobile Virtual Operators (MVO), (i) it has not been established that the opposition of these companies to the concession requests for MVOs –in 2006- had the unmistakable objective of preventing or hindering free competition; (ii) the delay in the dictation of the necessary concession decrees to start MVOs is not attributable to the defendants; and (iii) in this case, the conduct of “refusal to sell” could not be configured, since the MVOs did not have the necessary concessions to provide public services of mobile telephony at the time.
Regarding the the National Economic Prosecutor’s Office, Netline and the H. Members of Parliament Mulet, Uriarte, Sepúlveda and Dittborn’s requests of forcing the mobile telephony companies to make available to MVOs a “facilities offer and/or reselling of mobile telephony plans”, the Tribunal considered that current market conditions are very different than those of the time of the lawsuit (August 2007), and that the eventual need for said obligation is greatly reduced by now. This, regardless of what might be established in the future, after an analysis of the mobile telephony companies’ behavior when faced with service requests from MVOs.