Telecom giant Bezeq slapped with NIS 11 million fine

Israel’s biggest telecommunications company, Bezeq, has been fined NIS 11.2 million ($3 million) for failing to sell a landline phone service to competitors.

“The company is studying the decision and weighing the filing of a petition against it,” Bezeq said in a statement Sunday, according to Reuters. The statement noted that the fine was  “for breach of provisions in connection with implementation of a wholesale telephony service.”

In March, the company was fined NIS 30 million ($8.67 million) for monopolistic behavior.

That came after a year-long probe found that the company had failed to allow rivals to lay their fiber optic cables through its land-based protected tube lines in accordance with a government reform aimed at increasing competition.

The Communications Ministry decided some years ago that Bezeq should open its countrywide network of pipes, pillars and other infrastructure to competitors to save them the bureaucracy, high costs and huge disruption to the public of having to excavate to create their own networks underground.

The company is already embroiled in a major corruption scandal involving its main shareholder Shaul Elovitch and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, known as Case 4000.

Case 4000 involves suspicions that Elovitch ordered the Walla news site, which he owns, to grant positive coverage to the prime minister and his family, in exchange for the prime minister advancing telecommunications regulations benefiting Elovitch.