NOS/Jeroen van Eijndhoven
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 21:39
KPN is not allowed to take over price fighter Youfone for the time being. Supervisory Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) first wants to investigate the planned takeover of the telecom provider. It is currently not clear to the ACM whether KPN will take over the market with cheap calling subscriptions too much if it absorbs Youfone.
Youfone operates in a segment that offers cheap and simple mobile calling and internet services. This service is no frills which means something like ‘no frills’.
Because KPN already operates with Simyo in this segment, there is a chance that Youfone will become too big in this area. “And this reduces competition,” says an ACM spokesperson. “While competition is actually good for price, quality and innovation.”
In June, KPN announced that an agreement had been reached with Youfone for a takeover. The large telecom company had 200 million euros available for its fast-growing competitor, which already had more than 540,000 customers. The deal was extra interesting because Youfone uses KPN’s network to offer calling services.
Too powerful
The ACM says it assesses hundreds of merger and acquisition notifications every year, only a few of which require further investigation. In March, after additional investigation, Talpa and RTL Nederland were told that the watchdog prohibited a proposed merger because together they would become too powerful.
A month later, Roompot was given permission to take over Landal GreenParks, but only if thirty holiday parks were sold to competitor Dormio Group.
2023-09-14 19:39:27
#Watchdog #conducting #investigation #takeover #Youfone #KPN
