TP SA fined PLN 20m

2004-01-08

Office for Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) has announced that it had fined TP SA PLN 20m for refusing to sign connection deals with independent Internet service providers. "Internet service providers who want to use TP SA's infrastructure must sign interconnection agreements... but although TP SA received the first requests in 1996, it has not signed a single such agreement," UOKiK said in an official statement.TP SA replies it would appeal the fine, which amounts to about 4% of its most recent Q3 net profit of PLN 500m."Legal loopholes and not TP SA should be blamed for a lack of precise regulation, which would define the conditions of cooperation between the carriers and independent Internet service providers," the firm's spokeswoman Barbara Górska told Reuters.