MILAN, ITALY - Prysmian Group, the world leader in the energy and telecom cable systems industry, welcomes the European Commission’s decision to impose anti-dumping duties on imports of optical fibre cables from China.

The European Commission has today imposed anti-dumping duties ranging between 19.7% and 44% on imports of optical fibre cables from China. The strongly subsidized Chinese optical fibre cable industry has benefitted from an unfair competitive advantage, allowing it to increase significantly exports to the EU at heavily undercut prices during recent years.

Philippe Vanhille, EVP Telecom Division at Prysmian Group commented: “We welcome today’s European Commission’s decision and it is reassuring to see that Europe is able to strongly act against unfair practices. Fair competition must be ensured in the interest of our customers and stakeholders, to guarantee a sustainable availability of quality components for the construction of the European optical infrastructure.”

As a global leader in the industry, the Prysmian Group is strongly focused on the quality needed to deploy a truly future-proof telecom infrastructure that can keep up with new technologies. Protecting their products with patents and trademarks is therefore a key part of the Group’s activities, and legal initiatives are being taken as necessary part of a broader action plan to safeguard the efforts made in research and development.

Vanhille continued: “We believe it is fundamental to maintain high quality standards in the optical fibre segment, in order to ensure faster, more stable optical networks, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly installations with lower operating costs and an increased network lifespan. Only by doing this will be able to guarantee that the integrity of the network infrastructure is secured, stability is increased across all bands, and possibilities are opened up for system evolution.”