Truphone wins in court against T-Mobile blocking VOIP

I’ve written earlier about Truphone’s lawsuit against Vodafone for blocking access to VOIP services. Truphone now wins a succesful lawsuit in a similiar case against T-mobile.

Competition in the mobile telephony sector intensified today when a judge granted a mandatory injunction forcing T-Mobile (UK) Ltd to interconnect with Truphone, which provides a low-cost internet telephony service on mobile phones.

Core information

1. T-Mobile was instructed by the judge to stop blocking and begin routing calls to Truphone numbers by Monday 23rd July.
2. Today’s ruling is the first time that interim relief has been awarded against a mobile network operator under the Competition Act.
3. Full details of both sides’ skeleton legal arguments are available [see links below]. The judgment is expected to be available electronically tomorrow [Tuesday July 17th].

James Tagg, Truphone’s chief executive officer, said:

• "The injunction is good news not only for Truphone but for every company trying to develop internet-era services and for every consumer wanting freedom of choice and lower prices. We are determined to bring better-value mobile calls, text messages and other innovative services to mobile phone users, and it’s right that we should not be prevented from doing so."
• "To be granted interim relief means we successfully demonstrated that we have an arguable case to make at a full trial."
• "We didn’t want to go to court but we had no choice: T-Mobile was effectively preventing the launch of the Truphone service so we had to take urgent action."