By Frances Robinson
BRUSSELS--Online companies should strive to succeed but be wary
of abusing any dominant market position, the European Union's
competition commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, said Monday in an
overview of several high-profile antitrust cases.
"Just as being dominant is not an abuse in itself, being a
gatekeeper is not an abuse in itself either; but abusing these
positions is," he said in a Public Lecture on competition in the
online world at the London School of Economics. "It is only the
abuse, not the creation of a dominant position which is forbidden
under EU competition rules."
He stressed that no firm can be sanctioned just because it is
"better, more successful, or even luckier than others."
Google Inc. (GOOG) has offered concessions in the way it
displays results to settle a three-year antitrust probe and avert a
possible multibillion-dollar fine.
The EU has asked the other companies for feedback, and rivals
are reviewing the proposals; a settlement would be legally binding
without acknowledging that EU antitrust rules were broken.
"Enforcing antitrust rules here means preserving choice so that
users can pick their preferred services based on their merits," he
said. "It also means preserving the incentives to innovate across
the board, so that users can enjoy new and better services as they
appear on the market."
He also said his agency is reviewing evidence following surprise
raids earlier this year at some of the continent's biggest
telecommunications companies. France's Orange SA, Germany's
Deutsche Telekom AG and Spain's Telefonica SA were all searched as
part of the probe into how they handle Internet traffic.
"We wanted to make sure that these companies were not abusing a
dominant position by degrading the quality or limiting the speed of
third-party content, for example to favor their own content," he
said.
Internet service providers are able to exchange traffic through
a combination of wholesale services, also called peering
agreements. Such agreements have in the past largely been free of
payment, but in recent years telecommunications companies have
often demanded payment when there are big imbalances in
traffic--that is when one company is sending much more Internet
traffic than the other--leading to disputes.
"We are now reviewing the evidence obtained during the
inspections," he said. "Impairing connectivity at the gateway to
incumbents' networks would create unnecessary bottlenecks,
undermining the objectives of the Digital Agenda and impairing the
infrastructure of the knowledge economy."
Write to Frances Robinson at frances.robinson@dowjones.com
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