In a judgment delivered today, the Court of Appeal upheld Síminn's request for a declaration that the conditions of the Competition Authority's decision of 4 June 2015, in case no. 6/2015, had lapsed.
These are conditions based on an agreement that Síminn (then Skipti) made in 2013 with the supervisory authority to conclude 7 cases in which it was under investigation for whether the company had breached the prohibition provisions of competition law and an agreement it had made with the competition authorities, but in 2015 the conditions were revised at the request of Síminn, see decision no. 6/2015.
The conditions to which a company had committed to comply in order to promote competition in telecommunications markets, were indefinite, but under the settlement, Síminn was permitted to request that individual conditions be annulled if circumstances changed significantly in the telecommunications markets. The regulator's position on such a request was to be made known within a specified timeframe, otherwise the request would be deemed accepted and the relevant condition would lapse.
By decision no. In decision no. 24/2023, the Competition Authority concluded that there were no grounds to grant Síminn's request to lift all the conditions to which the company had previously committed in order to promote competition in the telecommunications markets. Síminn did not accept that decision and therefore brought a case before the Reykjavík District Court, where it, among other things, demanded that it be recognised that the conditions of Decision No. 6/2015 had lapsed. Síminn based its case, among other things, on the fact that the regulator's time limits for taking a position on its application had expired when it made its decision in the matter. The district court did not agree and dismissed Síminn's claim. The Court of Appeal has now reached the opposite conclusion.
The Competition Authority is now considering how to respond to the ruling of the Court of Appeal.
"*" indicates required fields
