Competitors accuse TDC of restricting competition for fast internet

Companies claim pricing structure for using the high-speed cable-TV network are designed to keep others out

A number of internet providers have criticised Denmark’s biggest telecom company TDC for the pricing structure it has proposed for other companies to use its cable-TV network, which serves 1.2 million households, claiming that the company is restricting competition, Jyllands-Posten reports.

TDC is obliged to make its infrastructure available to competitors, including the cable-TV network, which offers higher speed internet connections than its fibre and copper networks. TDC had previously announced that from the spring of this year it would open the network to other companies to sell high-speed internet without TV packages.

Pricing at issue
But the other companies are complaining that the prices TDC has set make it hard to compete with its own offerings. Yoel Caspersen is the head of the discount broadband provider Kviknet, which is one of the companies behind the complaint.

“It seems as though TDC’s proposed price model is carefully designed to keep other providers out of the competition on cable-TV internet,” he said.

According to the critics, TDC is demanding that they pay for the maximum capacity new customers are allowed to use instead of a price per customer, as is the case for the other networks in the TDC infrastructure.

TDC told Jyllands-Posten that there are technical differences between the cable-TV network and the other networks and that its wholesale prices should reflect the costs of running the network.