Four Orange sites were searched by the Competition Authority on March 10, 2022. An intervention motivated by suspicions of abuse of a dominant position in the wholesale fiber optic market.
Bad surprise for Orange, on March 10th. Four sites of the French group, including the head office in Issy-les-Moulineaux, were searched by the Competition Authority, according to information from the magazine Capital confirmed by Orange. As part of this operation, several million documents were reportedly seized. In response to this surprise descent, Orange indicated “having initiated proceedings to challenge these seizure operations”.
According to Capital, several files have led the Competition Authority, headed since January by Benoît Cœuré, to carry out this operation. There is in particular the restoration of the network in Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin after the passage of cyclone Irma in 2017. In these islands, the group is accused by the local operator Dauphin Telecom of having favored the restoration of its own infrastructure, to the detriment of the competition.
The other file concerns suspicions of abuse of a dominant position on the wholesale fiber optic market. Indeed, some competitors of Orange and local authorities, who rely on the operator’s very high speed network to market offers, believe that they have suffered from poor access to Orange’s infrastructure or from too high to be competitive. Gathered within the Association of Alternative Telecom Operators (AOTA), the latter had filed a complaint in 2020 against Orange with the Competition Authority. Despite the rejection of this, for lack of evidence, an exploratory investigation had been opened.