Fines to telephone operators for 28-day bills and failure to comply with the monthly billing schedule. The "case", on which the Government also intervened with the tax decree which effectively banned them, has long since ended up on the table of the Communications Guarantee Authority (Agcom), which decided to fine with 1,16 million each TIM operators, Vodafone, Wind Tre and Fastweb for the failure to comply with the monthly obligation.
In its meeting on Wednesday 20 December, the Board of the Communications Regulatory Authority in fact resolved to impose the sanction maximum established by the law "for failure to comply with its resolution on the frequency of renewal of offers and invoicing of services, in relation to fixed telephony and converging fixed-mobile offers", in relation to fixed telephony and convergent fixed-mobile offers.
THEauthority has at the same time issued specific guidelines concerning its implementation supervision activity, by the operators, of the provisions contained in the aforementioned matter. In practice, the Authority indicates that billing must correspond to the "solar" month understood as the twelfth part of the year. Furthermore, in the event that operators - by restoring billing to 12 months - decide to raise prices to recover the loss of income, this will trigger the right of customers to "be informed with adequate notice, not less than thirty days, regarding the aforementioned changes as well as regarding the possibility of exercising the right of withdrawal without penalties or deactivation costs".
According to analysts, the penalty will have a negligible impact on Telecom Italia's accounts . Furthermore, at the moment there have been no official communications on a very delicate issue, namely that of the possible retroactive compensation for incorrect billing. The consumer associations are asking for a refund of 50 euros plus 1 euro for each day after the repayment deadline, which will also be decided by Agcom, as well as an increase in the fine from 1,16 to 5 million.
In early February, the Lazio Tar will also rule on the 28-day billing and the companies will probably wait for this verdict to adapt to the new directives, also given the maximum limit of 120 days.
