Proximus and Orange Belgium have revealed that rival Telenet has lodged a complaint with the Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) against their plans to enter a network sharing joint venture before the end of the year. According to a statement on Proximus’s website, Telenet, which is said to have recently ended talks about potentially joining the collaboration, has requested the BCA adopts interim measures to suspend implementation of the project while it assesses the merits of the case. The competition watchdog is expected to decide on the request for interim measures by January 2020 at the latest. Proximus and Orange Belgium state they will fully cooperate with the procedure and ‘remain fully confident that their contemplated mobile network sharing agreement will bring positive effects to the Belgian mobile communications market’.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, Proximus and Orange signed a letter of intent in July to establish a 50-50 joint venture to plan, build and operate shared mobile network infrastructure, in line with common practices in several other EU markets. The cellcos expect to have 20% more mobile sites than with their current existing separate radio access networks.