BRUSSELS, March 7 (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators saidon Thursday they were closing a preliminary investigation intoEurope's biggest telecoms firms over development of newtechnology standards for mobile services.
The European Commission, which acts as competition watchdogfor the 27-country European Union, said it was satisfied thatthe operators had handed standardisation work over to the GSMAmobile industry grouping and other sector-wide associations.
It had been worried that work by five major operators -Vodafone, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica -risked shutting out competitors and harming consumers.
"The Commission welcomes this transfer, which allows morestakeholder participation. It is a positive step that reducesthe risk of standard setting work affecting competitionnegatively," the Commission said in a statement.