Arcep finds Orange in breach of unbundling practices

The French regulator, Arcep, has found Orange in breach of its non-discrimination and transparency obligations in the retail business market. The announcement follows an investigation, launched in October 2015, which was aimed at verifying whether Orange’s processes complied with the principle of equivalence of inputs’ hen providing access to its civil engineering infrastructure to competitors.

Arcep found that, when deploying its own fibre network for businesses, Orange Retail did not employ the same order processes and interfaces as for alternative operators.

Arcep said in a statement: “Arcep orders Orange to comply with its non-discrimination and transparency obligations for providing access to its civil engineering infrastructures for the business market.” The statement asked Orange to provide access to its local loop civil engineering infrastructures under the same conditions to alternative operators and to its own departments in terms of the processes and interfaces used for ordering access to civil engineering infrastructures in the business market across the entire country, by 30 September 2016.

Arcep also asked Orange to meet its obligation to provide information on accessing its civil engineering infrastructures for optical local loop deployments in the business market, by 31 January 2017 and for Orange to measure and publish, on its website by 31 October, the missing indicators on Orange Retail orders for access to Orange civil engineering infrastructures for the business market.

If Orange fails to comply with this decision the case could be referred to Arcep’s restriction committee and a penalty could be imposed.