Mobile telecommunications in Italy

Number Portability

By order of the Council of State 07029/2009, the effects of the rulings 5769/2009 and 5781/2009 by the TAR
of Lazio concerning the regulations for number portability under Resolution 78/08/CIR were suspended. The Authority therefore requested the operators to implement the dispositions covered by the Resolution (which called for, among other things, the ban on canceling requests, 3-day portability processing and a change in the daily capacity of requests).

Frequencies

On June 9, 2009, the bid for the assignment of user rights to the frequencies in the 2100 MHz band for the 3Gtype mobile service offering ended. Telecom Italia, Vodafone and Wind each were assigned 1 block of frequencies, each equal to 2x5 MHz.

International roaming

In June 2009, a new Regulation was adopted by the European Parliament and Council relating to roaming within the European Union (544/2009).

The rule, which modifies the previous Regulation of June 2007 on the subject (717/2007), calls for additional

price reductions for voice calls (retail and wholesale) and fixes maximum prices also for text messaging (at the retail and wholesale level) and data (at the wholesale level), to be applied within the 27 member states starting from July 2009. In particular, the rule:

• limits the cost of sending a text message to 0.11 euros (excluding VAT) and 0.04 euros for wholesale;
• reduces the maximum price on voice calls to 0.43 euros per minute (excluding VAT) for calls dialed and 0.19 euros per min. for calls received; also reduces the maximum price for wholesale to 0.26 euros per minute;
• imposes a maximum price on wholesale data at 1 euro per MB.

Further reductions are set to start on July 1, 2010 and July 1, 2011. The new Regulation also calls for more

transparency obligations on retail data and the introduction of expenditure ceilings beginning March 1, 2010 in order to avoid the so-called “bill shock” phenomenon.

The new laws will be applied up to summer 2012. The European Commission will re-examine the Regulation by June 30, 2011.

Mobile termination

Under Resolution 667/08/CONS, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale dated January 3, 2009, AGCom set up a planned series of reductions (running from 2009 to 2012) in the maximum termination prices of mobile network operators establishing, from July 1, 2009, a value of 7.70 euro cents per minute for Telecom Italia and Vodafone, 8.70 euro cents per minute for Wind and 11 euro cents per minute for H3G.

As a result of the change in the mobile termination price, we gave customers, beginning on July 1, 2009, a reduction in the cost of calls from a land-line phone to all mobile telephone operators, diversified according to the corresponding reductions in the mobile termination prices.

In February 2009, AGCom began a process to produce a new cost model for the mobile termination service

that takes into maximum consideration the Recommendation of the European Commission on the regulation of termination rates on fixed and mobile networks in the EU, adopted on May 7, 2009 (2009/396/EC). The adoption of the new cost model in the years to come could lead to a revision of the termination prices already authorized by AGCom in the resolution noted above.