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By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom (DE:DTEGn), Orange SA (PA:ORAN) and Telefonica (MC:TEF) did not shut out rivals in the Internet content market, EU antitrust regulators said on Friday as they dropped a 14-month investigation triggered by a U.S. competitor.
The case, which began with dawn raids in July last year, underlines the tension between telecoms operators and firms which carry data traffic on behalf of Internet companies such as Google's (O:GOOGL) YouTube to consumers around the world.
Telecoms providers are also seeking to charge for such delivery in a bid to benefit from the flourishing video-streaming business, while rivals have complained that the operators may be abusing their market dominance.
The European Commission took action following concerns raised by U.S.-based Cogent Communications. It did not name the companies investigated, but the firms themselves confirmed the dawn raids.
"The Commission found no evidence of behaviour aimed at foreclosing transit services from the market or at providing an unfair advantage to the telecoms operators' own proprietary content services," the EU executive said in a statement.
But it said it would continue to monitor the sector closely.
French and German competition regulators have already rejected Cogent's complaint on similar issues.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Pravin Char)