Vodafone sues Telecom Italia

OBVIOUSLY UPSET at getting left out of the mobile industry's litigation wars, Vodafone has decided to start up in Italy. It has decided to sue Telecom Italia (the fixed line operator) for £345 million. Obviously some serious data mining has been going on here.

The crux of Vodafone italia's complaint is that Telecom Italia has been providing information about its fixed line customers to its mobile arm - Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM). According to ANSA, Vodafone says Telecom, which controls 80 per cent of the lfixed line market, monitors its own customers so it can tell which ones are using rival firms for mobile services .

Vodafone accuses TIM of then using this profiling information to create targeted discount deals - particularly for families - so that Telecom Italia clients find it cheaper to use TIM as well.

The interesting point is that Vodafone knows that until Telecom Italia acquired TIM back in 2005, TIM was losing tens of thousands of clients to its rivals every month. Since the merger, TIM has miraculously gained some 3.5 million new clients.

Vodafone has complained about Telecom Italia's activities to the Anti-trust Authority as well as the country's privacy watchdog. Naturally Telecom Italia is claiming that there are serious Chinese walls in place which separate its fixed line operation from its newly acquired mobile arm.

The news will be welcomed by Vodafone's long-suffering shareholders who will like to see the company do something about the erosion to its core operating revenues. µ