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Corresponding to its asking for eliminating all retail fixed telephony markets, Belgacom thinks that the obligations of carrier selection or preselection and wholesale line rental (WLR) can be imposed at wholesale level.
B. Wholesale Transit Service (Market 10) in conjunction with Wholesale Trunk Segments of Leased Lines (Market 14): Eliminated
As the Commission already said, dedicated trunk connection may be an alternative to call transit services. So Belgacom questions the position held by the Commission in its veto decision against Austria concerning the substitution link between the two markets. In the view of Belgacom, whether from demand-side or from supply-side wholesale transit service (market 10), wholesale trunk segments of leased lines (Market 14) and self-provision through direct interconnection are substitutions to each other. Therefore, they should belong to the same market.
The Commission alleged that in order to analyse the transit market “evidence should be provided as to undertakings that are actually offering transit services to third parties or those which would, in the short term, be willing and consider it economically viable to offer such services to third parties.” In terms of this criterion, Belgacom will build its argument based on the following factors.
The availability of leased lines lowers the barriers for the self-provision of transit services through direct interconnection. Therefore, the cumulative existence of high non-transitory entry barriers and the absence of competition behind entry barriers would be difficult to argue for market 10. Also, a lot of alternative competitors have established their own trunk segments between big cities. Multiple backbone networks exist and the market is characterised by over-capacity. Requests for interconnection addressed at incumbent operators which concern transit is increasingly unimportant. Thus, the increasing supply of leased lines is competing with the provision of transit services from the supply side.
As a result, the market for transit services can be found to be effectively competitive, mainly because of substitution effects by direct interconnection between other licensed operators (OLOs).
By the reason of the development of Market 14 and the enhancement of self-provision through direct interconnection, there is no need to regulate market 10 and Market 14. Therefore, according to Belgacom, Market 10 and Market 14 can be eliminated from the list of relevant markets.
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