After long battle, CyTA loses fine case

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a prior judgement by the administrative court which had validated a decision by the competition watchdog to fine the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CyTA) to the tune of €390,000.

As such, the state-run telecom must now pay the fine.

The case dates back to 2007, when CyTA was accused of abusing its dominant market position. A company by the name of Golden Telemedia alleged that CyTA refused to provide its customers – who purchased ‘So Easy’ prepaid cards – access to telematics services.

In effect, CyTA was accused of blocking access to telematics access to Golden Telemedia customers.

Golden Telemedia filed their complaint with the Commission for the Protection of Competition (CPC) which in September 2012 found in favour of the complainant. The competition watchdog also imposed an administrative fine of €390,000 on CyTA.

Later, in January 2014, the CPC rescinded its decision of 2012. But shortly later, in February of the same year, the watchdog reversed the rescinding decision – meaning that it reverted to its initial decision to fine CyTA.

CyTA next challenged this reversal with the administrative court in 2018, but lost the case. It then appealed the judgement with the Supreme Court.

In its judgement now rejecting the appeal, the Supreme Court said that CyTA failed to convince that it had been treated unfairly. CyTA had also tried to argue that, earlier, the administrative court did not have all the facts before it when making its ruling. The Supreme Court rejected this argument as well.