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22 October 2009 / Dr Richard Burnley , Dr Russell Richardson
Issue: 7390 / Categories: Features , Competition
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Should the smallest boy in the park give up his ball to the biggest? ask Dr Russell Richardson & Dr Richard Burnley

Mobile Call Termination (MCT) is the service provided by a mobile operator at the wholesale level that allows other operators to terminate calls on its network. Mobile operators must purchase call termination from other operators in order to be able to connect their customers to other networks.

On 16 July 2009, the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by Hutchison 3G UK Limited (H3G) of the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s (CAT) judgment, which upheld Ofcom’s finding in March 2007 that H3G has significant market power (SMP) in the market for the provision of MCT. While H3G held a monopoly position on the market, and could be expected automatically to have SMP, the facts of this case were less straightforward.

In particular, the issue was whether BT, as one of H3G’s largest customers for MCT, could dictate what it should pay for the provision of MCT by H3G. To borrow the

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