French telecom authority Arcep welcomed a ruling from the country’s Council of State (Conseil d'Etat) rejecting the appeal lodged by Bouygues Telecom and SFR against a regulatory decision issued in October 2020, which authorised an extension to the national roaming deal between rivals Free Mobile and Orange. The latter had sought Arcep's approval to prolong their agreement over 2G/3G roaming to the end of 2022, prompting an in-depth examination into the terms of the extension. Commenting on the ruling from France’s supreme court, Arcep said that it supported its approach to network sharing regulation.
The verdict mentioned, among other observations, that the proportion of Free Mobile’s traffic relying on national roaming had been decreasing steadily, representing 1 percent of the overall traffic generated by the operator’s customer base. Taking into account the terms of the deal, the court concluded that the evidence brought against Arcep’s decision failed to prove an anti-competitive effect on the mobile market.
