EU antitrust officials carried out unannounced inspections Tuesday...

abuse of a dominant market position, it said. Internet players interconnect with each other through a combination of wholesale services to cover all possible Internet destinations, the EC said. Connectivity allows market players such as content providers to connect to the Internet in order to provide their retail services or products, it said. That service is “crucial for the functioning of the Internet” as well as for end-users’ ability to reach online content with the necessary quality of service, regardless of where the provider is located, it said. Unannounced inspections are a preliminary step toward determining if certain activities are anticompetitive, it said. The fact that such raids are carried out doesn’t mean the companies are guilty of antitrust behavior or prejudge the outcome of the investigation, it said. The EC won’t publish the names of the companies at this point, it said. The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association had no comment. ISPs under investigation include Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica, wrote independent telecom consultant Innocenzo Genna Thursday on his radiobruxelleslibera blog (http://bit.ly/12p0UbP). The EC “intend[s] to verify the peering policies of such dominant operators because there are suspects [sic] that they may refuse peering (i.e. exchange of Internet traffic with other ISPs, normally for free) for anticompetitive purposes,” said Genna, who’s also council officer of the European Internet Services Providers’ Association. The case has a “strong connection with the net neutrality debate,” because the refusal of peering may cause artificial scarcity of Internet bandwidth, since the interconnection between the various ISPs is kept at a level that’s insufficient for the quantity of Internet traffic, he said. That results in congestion, interruptions and delays affecting users, he said. The possible goals of such alleged anticompetitive behaviour are questionable, he said. Dominant ISPs could be trying to force other operators such as carriers or rival ISPs to pay a potentially abusive price for peering directly with them, he said. The traffic of ISPs for whom peering is refused will be directed to other destinations via transit agreement and will reach the dominant ISPs through a longer path, with a negative impact on users’ quality of service, he said. Another reason for the alleged behavior may be to force hosting providers such as Google to move their servers to the dominant ISPs’ networks in order to give the latter’s clients better quality, he said. Genna stressed that Orange, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom aren’t dominant in the peering market, but they are in the broadband access markets. The EC intends to verify whether they're leveraging that position to get higher prices in the competitive peering market, he wrote. Orange spokesperson said: “A number of Orange premises are currently subject to inspection by the European Commission and these inspections could take several days to complete. Orange is extending its full cooperation to the European Commission and at this point the Group’s working practices have not been called into question in any way. We are confident about the eventual outcome of this matter, given the French Competition Authority decision regarding Cogent which exonerated our Group. The company’s business activities are continuing as normal during the inspections.” The EC probe apparently arises from a dispute between Orange and Cogent last year, Genna wrote. Cogent was refused a free peering agreement and lost a case before France’s competition authority on the basis that Orange was allowed to charge for peering to avoid a strong imbalance of traffic from Cogent, which was hosting, among other things, the Megaupload cyberlocker service, he said. Orange was, however, required to clarify its peering policy, he said.