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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

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    Spain says mobile operators colluded on price

    MADRID
    Thu Jul 3, 2008 10:48am EDT

    Stocks

       

    MADRID (Reuters) - Three mobile phone operators in Spain fixed tariffs in March 2007 to compensate for a new law banning rounding up call periods, Spain's Competition Commission said on Thursday, citing initial findings of an investigation.

    Movistar, the mobile telecoms arm of Spain's Telefonica (TEF.MC), France Telecom-owned Orange (FTE.PA) and Vodafone (VOD.L) were anti-competitive by raising in unison the connection charge of a call to 15 cents from 12 cents, the Commission said.

    The anti-trust regulator opened an investigation in October after complaints from consumer groups, a spokeswoman for the Commission said. The companies have 15 days to respond to the findings before the Commission writes a final report, she said.

    Telefonica declined to comment. No-one at Vodafone or Orange was immediately available to comment.

    The Spanish law introduced in March 2007 prevented mobile phone companies rounding up the duration of a call to the nearest minute, cutting a source of revenue for the operators.

    More than half of all mobile phone calls are less than one minute long, analysts say.

    (Reporting by Ben Harding, writing by Sonya Dowsett, editing by Will Waterman)


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