Brussels closes antitrust case on &#39;roaming&#39;
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European Union antitrust authorities closed on Wednesday long-running investigations into Vodafone and two other big mobile phone companies that allegedly charged excessive international call fees.
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A European court dismisses Microsoft's appeal in a long-running dispute about competition.
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EU governments yesterday agreed to cut the cost of using mobile phones abroad, the last hurdle for a cap on roaming fees to be introduced later this summer.
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The European Union closed antitrust cases Tuesday against six major Hollywood studios after they agreed to drop clauses in contracts with pay television operators that the EU said keeps the price of films artificially high in Europe.
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BRUSSELS, Oct 19  - The European Union&#39;s executive arm said Tuesday it had virtually wrapped up a settlement to a long-running dispute over anti-competitive retail practices by Coca-Cola.
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A European court has upheld the bulk of an antitrust ruling against Microsoft Corp. made by the European Commission in 2004
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European Union ministers adopted on  Thursday rules that will slash the price of making cell phone  calls abroad in the 27-member bloc, after a year of wrangling  and heated debate, the EU&#39;s German presidency said.
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Novell and the Computer and Communications Industry Association have agreed to end their participation in the legal case against Microsoft in the European Union.
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(InfoWorld) - While mobile operators claim to be cutting the cost of roaming, their efforts are just a smoke screen and have no appreciable effect on charges overall, a European consumer rights group has said. The lower tariffs are typically available for a limited duration, sometimes requiring payment of an additional subscription fee, and may only be cheaper for long calls made using certain networks, BEUC, the European Consumers' Organisation, said on Tuesday. The fees should be capped at â¬0.33 ($0.43) per minute for customers roaming outside their home country, consumer groups said . Their demand is considerably lower than the cap of â¬0.49 per minuteÂ proposed by the European CommissionÂ in draft legislation that could be voted by June. Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media,Â announced plans last FebruaryÂ to crack down on mobile phone roaming charges, which she said were unreasonably high. On July 12, the Commission proposed cutting by 70 percent the cost of making and receiving calls while travelling in another European Union member state, saving European consumers â¬5 billion a year, according to the Commission's figures. Under the Commission's proposal, operators will be allowed to charge no more than â¬0.16 per minute for calls received while travelling abroad, â¬0.33 per minute for calls made within the country being visited, or â¬0.49 per minute for calls made back home or to a third country while abroad. However, that's still too much for the consumer groups, which called for charges of â¬0.16, â¬0.25 and 0.33 per minute, respectively. The French Consumers' Union (UFC - Que Choisir) called for national telecommunications regulators to collect more information about the volume of incoming, outgoing and local roaming calls, and the wholesale prices charged by operators for each type of call. Without such statistics, it's difficult to measure the effects of tariffs and policies, the group said. Regulators and consumers are dependent on figures provided by the GSM Association, which represents 700 mobile phone operators, the French group said. Those figures showed that the cost of making roaming calls in Europe fell by 25 percent in 2006, from â¬0.83 per minute to â¬0.62, the GSM Association said on Feb. 8. The price decline shows that regulation, especially of the retail market, is unnecessary, the Association said. In the absence of independent measurements of the market, BEUC and UFC - Que Choisir commissioned their own economic analysis in order to determine what they consider fair price caps. Limiting charges to â¬0.33 per minute will stimulate demand, and so have no adverse effect on operators' revenue or profit, they said. Based on mobile phone bills supplied by Members of the European Parliament, they calculated that lower charges could save MEPs an average over â¬1,000 each per year. European telecommunications ministers are expected to discuss the Commission's proposed regulations at informal meetings alongside the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, next month, while the European Parliament will vote on the proposals in April. Germany, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has announced its intention to push the legislation on roaming prices through by the end of June, when its term of office ends. Â
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Heads off EC investigation The European Commission has ended its antitrust investigation into Apple after the computing giant agreed to cut the price UK consumers pay to download music for their iPods.â¦
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Rival mobile telephony vendors are settling their court battle with a cross-licensing agreement.
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Just in time for summer hols The EU has given the thumbs up to the Euro tariff for mobile phone roaming.â¦
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MADRID, Spain: The trial of 28 people accused in the Madrid train bombings - Europe's biggest terrorist court case - wrapped up Monday with closing arguments by defense lawyers before the three-judge panel was ... via International Herald Tribune
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The EU antitrust investigation into Apple has ended after the company agreed to reduce the price of music downloads.
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The European Union has psased a law that will dramatically cut the cost of roaming between countries with a mobile phone.
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GlaxoSmithKline GSK.L won a   partial victory from a European Union court on Wednesday in its   bid to stop Spanish drug wholesalers from re-exporting its   medicines at high premiums.
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Coca-Cola is putting an end to a 5-year-old antitrust investigation in the European Union by agreeing to stop business practices that were viewed as unfair.