Meet the founder
Carmen Mateas Moreno
Founding Partner
Carmen Mateas Moreno is a qualified lawyer, admitted to the Madrid Bar. She is the founder of MATEAS LAWYERS and works as managing partner of the firm. She has worked on regulatory affairs internationally for more than 20 years.
Born in Jaen (a province in Southern Spain, Andalusia, internationally recognised for its immense olive tree fields and excellent olive oil production) in 1969, she graduated as a lawyer from Granada University with the highest qualifications and received several awards for her outstanding academic performance (including the prestigious national University Studies´ Award).She was then admitted to the College of Europe´s Master on EU Law (Bruges, Belgium) which she finished with Honours, and trained in Competition Law at the Court of First Instance (now General Court) of the European Union (EU) in Luxemburg.
She began her professional career working as competition law/telecoms associate in the Brussels offices of several international law firms. She soon joined the telecommunications industry at an early time in its liberalization, and worked as regulatory & interconnection advisor at Belgium´s incumbent operator, Belgacom, in Brussels.
In 1998, she returned to Madrid, Spain, to be the senior regulatory advisor to Retevision´s Secretary General (Retevision was Spain´s second licensed fixed-line operator in 199, a critical year for Spanish telecommunications´ liberalization). France Telecom Group hired Carmen as Director for Competition Regulation, a position she held for almost eight years until she set up MATEAS LAWYERS.
Throughout these years Carmen obtained important regulatory achievements. A few examples of these are:
Carmen filed a complaint to the EU Commission for abuse of dominance in the form of margin squeeze in the Spanish fixed broadband market. She defended the case and obtained a fine of € 152.000.000 € (the highest ever imposed by the Commission on a telecommunications operator for abuse of dominance). This case is an unavoidable reference on how EU antitrust rules apply to electronic communications and other regulated sectors.
Carmen has successfully negotiated many fixed and mobile interconnection agreements early in telecoms liberalization (when such agreements are more critical to allow market entry, and a level playing field is generally not yet established).
Carmen has obtained landmark decisions from national regulatory authorities, e.g.:
- the approval of a system of capacity charging for interconnection (including for combined voice and internet traffic) at the most favorable prices in the EU, giving new entrants the opportunity to compete with the incumbent´s retail flat rate offers without incurring in massive losses due to per minute interconnection pricing;
- the introduction of a third party verification system (VPT, as per its Spanish acronyms) for consumers to give their consent to switching providers under carrier preselection. As a result CPS experienced hockey-stick growth and slamming was reduced. At that time, the law required consumers to physically sign a written contract. Carmen applied imaginative legal thinking and advised the NRA how to introduce VPT without changing or breaking the law;
- the interim suspension of aggressively priced retail offers of the incumbent operator prior to their commercial launch. These offers would have imposed a margin squeeze on competitors; and
- the elimination of abusive clauses from interconnection agreements (these abusive clauses included unjustified minimum deployment requirements and penalties, raising entry barriers for alternative network operators).
In parallel to her work at MATEAS LAWYERS Carmen has held the positions of Vice-president and President of Andalusia´s Committee for Knowledge Society, and Secretary General of Spain´s Wind Energy Association.
Carmen is Spanish native, has bilingual proficiency in English and French and full professional proficiency in Italian.