HAVEL & PARTNERS, in cooperation with the Brussels office of US law firm Jones Day, provided comprehensive legal advice to T-Mobile in the European Commission proceedings. The European Commission conducted an investigation into the suspicion of a possible restriction of competition due to T-Mobile’s agreement with CETIN and O2 to share mobile network infrastructure and has now adopted a decision approving the commitments proposed by T-Mobile Czech Republic, CETIN and O2 Czech Republic, thus finally closing the six-year long proceedings.

The European Commission initially considered that mobile network sharing in the Czech Republic could distort competition between mobile operators. The representation of T-Mobile, which was handled by HAVEL & PARTNERS competition law experts, namely partner Robert Neruda, counsel Ivo Šimeček and senior associate Jakub Kocmánek, required both comprehensive legal arguments in the proceedings and detailed knowledge of how mobile technologies work, including interpretation of the economic analysis of the impact of the cooperation on the market.

Thanks to sound legal and economic arguments and active communication with the Commission, many open issues were successfully clarified and potential concerns of the Commission about the preservation of effective competition were substantially removed.

The proceedings were closed by adopting commitments that lead to improved cooperation mechanisms between mobile operators, guaranteeing effective competition in the future and thus creating a stable legal basis for operators to operate a high-quality mobile network. This all for the benefit of end consumers, who can benefit from the implementation of new technologies that enable faster data speeds and better-quality connections.

“The proceedings are the first of their kind in which the European Commission has commented in detail on the competition law limits to mobile network sharing. This is of fundamental importance not only for this case, but also for future cooperation between operators across Europe. The clarification of cooperation rules in the case of Czech network sharing thus contributes to greater legal certainty regarding network sharing, which is crucial for the further development of telecommunications in Europe,” commented Robert Neruda on the outcome of the proceedings. The successful closing of the proceedings will thus enable T-Mobile to continue building a high-quality and reliable mobile network for its customers.