Anti-competition
The Commission is required under Part 8 of the Telecommunications Act 2009 to monitor competitive practices in the Solomon Islands. Service providers are not permitted to enter into contracts which negatively affect or lessen competition in a telecommunications market.
Anti-competition practices include but are not limited to the following practices:
- Fixing the retail price or other conditions of trading;
- Apportioning, sharing or allocating a market (or markets) among themselves or other service providers;
- Preventing or restricting the supply or acquisition of a service to or from a person or group of persons;
- Requiring or unfairly inducing a supplier to refrain from selling to another service provider;
- Imposing unfair restrictions on who other persons may deal with in a market;
- Competing unfairly in a market by cross-subsidising a service from a service that is not available in another, competitive, market;
- Competing unfairly in a retail market by reducing the profit margin available to a competing service provider in a manner that adversely affects the market conditions;
- Supplying a service at prices below cost for a substantial period of time such that competitors are at risk of being driven out of the market;
- Bundling offered services in a manner that unfairly offers discounts for one or more of those services;
- Purposefully pre-emptively acquiring scarce resources (including rights of way) that are required by another service provider for their operations, with the intention to unfairly deny the use of the resource to the other service provider;
- Adopting technical specification for networks or facilities with the purpose of preventing interoperability with another service provider’s network or facility.
The Commission may take actions in order to substantially reduce competition in a market.
Under certain conditions, the Commission has the authority to exempt a practice or contract from anti-competition rules. Agreements between service providers that may exhibit anti-competitive characteristics are also allowed under certain conditions.
Please contact the Director of Markets and Competition for more information.
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