FreshPhoneNews.com

Ever wonder how the iPhone is faring in France? Well, up in the beautiful country, Apple has an exclusive deal with Orange to sell the iPhone. But it seems now that the partnership is about to end since the French Competition Council has put its foot down. Competitor of Orange, Bouygues Telecom SA, filed a complaint with the French Competition Council claiming that the exclusive deal forced customers to switch carriers when they wanted to change a phone and use the iPhone. According to them, this is a serious threat to competition and very costly to customers. Well, the Competition Council agrees with them and now other carriers will also offer their customers the iPhone. Officially, they said, “by nature introduces a new factor of rigidity in a sector that already lacks competition”.

Whether this really s in the spirit of competition or not is something debatable, given that the French Telecom Industry hasn’t seen a lot of competition, this may be one solution to an otherwise monopoly, but then again, how about just bringing other sets in from other carriers? In any case, Bouygues Telecom SA is now happy and there aren’t any comments available from Orange yet.