Europeans largest network provider Vodafone has today obtained a court order requiring rival T-Mobile to sell the iPhone without a contract.
A Hamburg Court handed down the order to T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom stating that the court requires a response within two weeks.
Deutsche Telekon had confirmed the ruling.
Meanwhile the Dow Jones appears to offer a somewhat different coverage of the matter implying that the temporary injunction handed down by the court prevents the sale of any iPhone units in Germany, as opposed to just those with a contract.
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Vincent
20th November 2007, 20.40 pm
Maybe Dow Jones already reports “Murdoch style”: anything but the truth…
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Dominik
20th November 2007, 21.48 pm
Actually, both sources report more or less the same. Spiegel Online (reading the German version) is somewhat unclear in their wording, but a “einstweilige Verfügung” is a restraining order that can for one only lead to a sales ban under the current conditions. This ban might of course lead to a change about the exclusivity, but the first result would be the ban Dow Jones is talking about. Technically, T-Mobile would have to stop selling iPhones for the time being (until a final court ruling), but since Vodafone is not pushing the matter, they still sell it.
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Dominik
20th November 2007, 22.06 pm
I read a liitle on and found the following: According to Financial Times Germany (http://www.ftd.de/technik/it_telekommunikation/:T Mobile Flop/281529.html), Vodafone critizises that T-Mobile, which has a dominant position on the German market, does not follow regulations they are bound to oblig due to that dominant position. In other words: because they are so big, they are not allowed to abuse their power through strict contracts. That is, of course, precisely what they do with the iPhone. Vodafone aims it criticism at the fact that potential iPhone users have to select one of three contracts and cannot chose from the whole range of T-Mobile contracts (or without any contract at all).
We’ll see in two weeks, how this ends. And tomorrow, how T-Mobile’s immediate reaction looks like.
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Alex Brooks
21st November 2007, 00.01 am
Hi Dominik,
Thanks for doing a bit of translating for us. Brilliant work and great insight.
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