Telefonica

Europe

Telefónica has received several fines due to convictions over unfair competition, abuse of its condition as dominant provider, and antitrust violations through the Commission of Telecomunications, European Commission, and Spanish tribunals. These fines include: 900,000 euro fine, Spanish tribunals, 18 million euro fine, Spanish Telecommunication Market commission, 57 million in 2004 for unfair competition, and 151,9 million euro by European Commission for abusing of its dominant position. This last fine is the biggest fine on the history of the European for Defence of the Compentence tribunal imposed to any entity on his whole history. Now Telefonica has in court two more fines, with a value of 793 million euros.

Several consumer groups in Spain have reported unnecessary delays to cancel Telefonica's ADSL service. Those consumer groups also claim that services are billed to them after being canceled. They also claim that cancellations of services are ignored. This has led Spanish people to organize themselves in consumer groups like "Asociación de Internautas" or user communities like "Bandaancha" in order to defend them from Telefónica's abuses, giving support and help to diverse reclamations against bad practices of Telefónica. Those practices include the complex process to cancel the line. These procedures to cancel the line are justified by Telefonica as a way of "defending customers against jokes" or "lines down and awaiting repair". In areas where ADSL lines are scarce, there are also reports of customers that claim to have had their service cancelled and given to another customer for unknown reasons despite paying their bills. This practice is considered by some to be used by Telefonica in certain areas of Spain where there are few broadband connections. That is, when there are not enough connections for each customer in a certain area, one of the old customers has his connection cancel led in order to give it to a new one.

South America

Telefónica has been continually targeted by more recent governments in South America because of its monopolistic business practices, due to the evidence of bribery and underhanded legal agreements when originally entering the markets in association with corrupt governments. Most of the administrations which allowed Telefónica entry into South American markets have been unmasked as corrupt and prone to bribery, a situation which, according to investigators, Telefónica took advantage of. To wit, Fujimori in Peru, Menem in Argentina, etc.

The problem lies in the fact that these administrations allowed Telefónica enormous latitude in the agreements, effectively giving them the power to operate above the law in some situations (for example, assigning or loaning land lines in Peru; where other companies must go through a lengthy approval process, Telefónica is able to unilaterally add or remove land lines at will). With the return to democracy, these nations have been attempting to resolve this situation and reach more balanced agreements with the company; however, Telefónica now takes advantage of the transparency and legality of these new governments and is reticent to give up any powers it gained with the older administrations.