The main victims will be small- and medium-sized companies, whose choice of service providers will be reduced and who are not in a position to exert any downward pressure on the prices for such services; - the national markets in question are very important in terms of size in the total EU context: approximately 45 % of data communications services in the entire EU are accounted for by services provided in France
and Germany; - the elimination of competition on national markets is aggravated by the fact that the parent companies of ATLAS at present enjoy monopolies for the provision of infrastructure, the necessary building blocks for
...[+++]service providers competing with ATLAS; in the absence of alternative infrastructure allowing competing service providers to build up their own networks at competitive prices, competition will suffer a set-back precisely at the time that action taken by the Commission to liberalize all telecommunications services except basic voice services should begin to bear its fruits for the benefit of users.