A Paris court ruled yesterday that France Telecom could continue
marketing its WAP enabled mobile phones only if it informed
customers that the phones were programmed to link up automatically
to its own web portal and gave them the ability to ‘unlock’ their
WAP phones so they could log on to another internet portal.
Wappup, an ISP, and the French mobile internet association
(AFIM) had accused France Telecom of using its large share of the
telephone market to gain an unfair entrance into the ISP
market.
France Telecom’s sales of its WAP phones if the company fails to
comply with the court order by 13th June.
A spokesman for France Telecom warned that the company could not
guarantee high quality WAP services to users who switched portal
because its phones were configured to use its portal.
Yesterday, France Telecom also announced that it would pay
Vodafone AirTouch £31 billion to purchase Orange, the UK mobile
phone network.
