Brussels, 02/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - In its ruling in Case C-99/09 on 1 July, the Court stated that the amount of the charge that consumers must pay to retain the same phone number when changing operator (“portability of a number”) must take into account the costs incurred by operators for providing this service, as set out explicitly in the 2002 “universal service” directive. Nonetheless, it is up to the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) to assess - using an objective, reliable and transparent method - the costs borne by operators for the provision of this service, on one hand, and, on the other, the threshold beyond which the fee could discourage consumers from asking for their number to be transferred. Where necessary, the NRA must oppose a fee that exceeds this threshold, if needs be by fixing the “maximum amount of that charge levied by operators at a level below the costs incurred by them, when a charge calculated only on the basis of those costs is liable to dissuade users from making use of the portability facility”.
The Court thus answered the Polish Supreme Court, before which an appeal on a point of law was brought by the operator Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa sp.zoo, which had been condemned to pay a fine of PLN 100,000 (about €24,350) by the Polish office of electronic communications for violation of the legal provisions on portability. The latter, basing its argument on the results of a survey among consumers on the amount they considered most appropriate for the portability service, had established the amount at PLN 50 and considered that PLN 122 (€29.70) demanded by the company for provision of portability was dissuasive for consumers. (F.G./transl.jl)