PARIS (Reuters) – The Orange group is preparing legal action against Arcep, the French telecoms authority, for failing to raise the unbundling rate paid to it by other telecoms operators to use its national copper network, the chief executive said on Wednesday. of the group, Christel Heydemann.
“We are preparing to introduce heavy litigation against Arcep’s decisions not to review the unbundling tariff,” said Christel Heydemann during a hearing by the Senate’s Economic Affairs Committee.
In its last decision to increase the unbundling tariff, in December 2020, the regulator had opened up the possibility of an increase in the tariff provided that the incumbent operator presents an “ambitious” plan to close its copper network.
“We have kept our commitments (Orange presented its plan at the start of the year-Editor’s note) and therefore naturally ask that the unbundling prices be reviewed, this is what had been agreed”, explained Christel Heydemann to the senators.
“Contrary to its commitment to us, Arcep has not revised the access prices in 2022 and 2023” while this price regulation “leads to a transfer of value from the operator of infrastructure to commercial operators, putting Orange in an unacceptable economic situation,” she continued.
During the public consultation on this subject organized at the beginning of the year by Arcep, the incumbent operator highlighted the heavy maintenance costs of the copper network and the low revenues it generates with the switch of customers to fiber to demand an increase in the unbundling rate.
The operators Bouygues Telecom (Bouygues group), Free (subsidiary of Iliad) and SFR are for their part opposed to a rise in tariffs, denouncing an “annuity” of Orange on an infrastructure doomed to disappear and already amortized.
(Written by Myriam Rivet, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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