Commission for Protection of Competition: No proof of mobile operators in Serbia agreeing prices

The Commission for Protection of Competition has announced that it cannot be justifiably assumed that the three mobile operators in Serbia had previous agreements about increasing the prices of their services.

– Based on the facts collected, it cannot be concluded that there were direct or indirect secret agreements – the Commission announced on its website. At the end of February and throughout March, based on the publicly available information, the Commission for Protection of Competition was familiar with the intention of all three mobile operators to increase the prices of mobile telephony services.

Regarding that, the Commission received several initiatives for examining the potential violation of competition principles.

Acting in line with these initiatives, the Commission collected and analyzed the regulatory framework, the publicly available data, and requested all three operators of mobile telephony in Serbia to make statements.

– In highly concentrated markets, a price change which is not part of a potential previously reached agreement, and which is not simultaneous at that, nor in the same (nominal/percentual) amount and which is previously announced to consumers’ organizations, the regulatory body, as well as publicly announced in line with the relevant regulations, is not sufficient for the Commission to reliably suspect conduct which would indicate a violation of competition to the extent that enables the meeting of the legal standard for an ex officio initiation of a procedure – the Commission says in its statement.

Komisija za zaštitu konkurencije Srbije

Commission for Protection of Competition

mobile operators

mobile telephony price increases