In a busy month for regulators, Telecom NZ was caught abusing its market power, SmarTone was penalized again for making false claims and the Australian ombudsmen reported soaring complaints.
The NZ High Court ruled that the incumbent had charged disproportionately high rates for wholesale access - often higher than its retail prices - between 2001 and 2004.
The actions - which breached New Zealand's Commerce Act - prevented ISPs from offering competitive retail prices for high-speed data services, the NZ Commerce Commission (NZCC) had argued.
The operator aimed to deny competitors access at prices that would allow them to develop their own broadband networks, the court found.
Telecom NZ is reviewing the decision, but Telecom Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) CEO Ernie Newman told Telecom Asia that the judgment was of little use to ISPs whose business was damaged by Telecom's behavior.
"It's very unfortunate that these things take so long," he said. "A deterrent that takes six years for the court to decide upon is really not a deterrent at all."
Hong Kong regulator Ofta fined mobile operator SmarTone just HK$110,000 ($14,140) for making false claims about rival CSL. It was the second such case for SmarTone, which three years ago was fined HK$100,000 ($12,900) for misleading ads about its roaming services.
A SmarTone account manager had sent emails to CSL corporate customers in June last year, claiming that appointing ZTE as vendor in place of Nokia Siemens would affect the carrier's network quality.
"Changing the network infrastructure was just like a human to have a BIG surgery," the email claimed. "SmarTone could foresee that there would be lots of impact on CSL's network both in terms of quality and stability."