France's Competition Authority has issued an opinion on the 3G roaming agreement in place between Orange France and Free Mobile, finding that it should not be extended beyond its current deadline of 2018. The authority states that the 3G roaming deal was necessary to allow Free to compete in a market where coverage of the others carriers' 3G networks was already particularly advanced. On the other hand, it wants the agreement to be strictly limited in time to avoid harming competition and creating a market imbalance. Roaming should be ended within a set timeframe when Free reaches sufficient coverage in each area. The Competition Authority said that Free could roam on 4G networks as it does not have any 800MHz spectrum of its own, but only in areas with low population density, also called priority deployment zones. Concerning Orange and Free's 2G roaming agreement through 2016, the competition body states that the agreement could be extended beyond its term, but only if it is limited to customers whose handsets are 2G-only.
