ARMENTEL TO PAY A PENALTY FOR UNLAWFUL COMPETITION

YEREVAN, MARCH 10. ARMINFO. The Commission for Economic Competition
Protection recognized ArmenTel company guilty for unlawful economical
competition. The company is to pay as a penalty 1% of its income from
cell communications services.

This resolution was made on the today session of the Commission when
the claim of VivaCel,l accusing ArmenTel in dumping, was
considered. The matter is that ArmenTel adopted preference tariffs for
those subscribers who hold SIM cards for longer than 12 months. So,
from January 1 to April 30, 2006, SIM-card holders had to pay AMD 2
instead of AMD 48 per minute.

By the agreement about connection of ArmenTel and VivaCell networks
the latter has to pay ArmenTel for phone call retranslation AMD 9,96
(19,93 in the regions) per minute. Thus VivaCell is in a subjected
position and can be pressed out of the market at ArmenTel’s will. At
the same time it was noted that there are 665 thousand cell network
subscribers in Armenia, of which 47,3% are ArmenTel card holders and
52,7% – VivaCell. It should be noted that VivaCell entered the
Armenian market only on July 1, 2005.

The Commission for Economic Competition Protection has already
penalized ArmenTel in 2005 for the low quality of its cell
services. ArmenTel paid AMD 158,6 million to the state budget.