إساءة استغلال المركز المهيمن في تسعيرة خدمات الاتصالات: دراسة مقارنة

الملخص EN

The merchants or the economic enterprises seek to achieve profits.

For that, they enter into competition with its counterparts to obtain economic power and rise to the dominant position over the market, provided that assuming this position is not prohibited in itself.

This is so because the competition requires maximum efforts in order to reach the desired goal.

However, there are several resiresrtion rules.

One of these rules is the consderartion to abuse the economic capacity and the dominant position to restrict and prevent free competition by excluding other competitors from practicing economic activity in the market.

And it is through the legislation boundary between the two matters should be skched.

Since the telecommunications sector was liberalized and transformed from a planned central monopolistic system to one based on a free market economy and competition, this service providers must be entered into a competitive struggle to gain the largest possible number of customers and the highest profits.

This way of entery sometimes resorted to some anti-competitive practices.

Perhaps the most common ones which focuses on pricing services not only through excessive or unfair pricing that is achieved by selling at a high price by the dominant service provider, but also by selling the service at a price lower than its cost in order to expel its competitors and acquire their market shares.

This is what is called in the legal doctroine and legislation of competition by predatory pricing.

Or it is selling at different prices to different buyers despite the similarity of their contractual positions, and this is called discriminatory pricing.

In one way or other, these behaviors and practices have negative effects that are reflected on the consumers with the price disturbances, for example by exclusiding of competitors from the market and favoritism towards each other and in the general economic system with market imbalance.

As a result, both the competitions and communications comparative laws and their concerned administrative bodies have taken over to address the above issues.

This is by providing rules and provsions that balance between narrow and expanded rules in the light of reasons of each law with a variety of applications.

In doing so, we attempt to present a coherent competitive system for the Iraqi legislator, as well the Kurduish legislator, in this comparative study.

This is through, one the one hand, how they can confront “abuse of the dominant position in the pricing of telecommunications services” in a way that ensures a balance between freedom of competition in the telecommunications sector, and to maintain competition in it, on the other hand.