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Other Telecom Firms Have No Disagreement in Principle with ST Buy

Association of Telecommunication Operators (ATO) has no reservations against Slovak Telecom (ST), the fixed-line operator, gaining a 100-percent stake in EuroTel (one of Slovakia's two mobile operators) if effective competition can be guaranteed.

ST is in the final phase of talks with EuroTel in order to gain the full ownership over the mobile operator.

ATO chairman Vladimir Ondrovic says if this happens the market might become deformed, and effective competition might be limited. However, ATO will respect a concentration of ST and EuroTel if seven conditions are fulfilled. Those were specified at ATO's press conference in Bratislava on Monday.

One of the conditions is to keep the legal subjectivity of ST and EuroTel, including their administrative and accounting departments.

ANO also requires a guarantee of some transparent relations, which will be undiscriminating towards other competitors, and a guarantee of that the market will not be threatened by existence of possible common products of ST and Eurotel, which wouldn't be offered to other parties, and which would be a subject to the same conditions.

According to Marek Chovanec, legal representative of Orange Slovensko, purchasing the EuroTel shares is part of the concentration involved in the so-called "European dimension". Due to this, consistent analysis is necessary, and some adequate measures need to be done, so that the competition could further develop. But Chovanec says it's impossible that the competition of mobile operators would cease to exist at all.

At Monday's press conference, Ondrejovic also commented on the fact that the Telecommunication Office (TU) was supposed to analyse 18 relevant markets by the end of June with respect to the electronic communications legislation. According to him, only four of the markets have been analysed so far, which means that TU broke the law.