The European Commission could hit Qualcomm with another huge competition fine, less than 18 months after slapping a €997 million penalty on the company for a separate antitrust issue, Bloomberg reported.

The latest investigation, which could reportedly be completed within the next month, surrounds the pricing of Qualcomm 3G mobile internet dongle chips supplied between 2009 and 2011.

Authorities are investigating if the US chip company sold the items at below the cost of manufacture and supply to push rival Icera out of the market.

In January 2018 The European Commission hit Qualcomm with a massive fine for apparently paying Apple to exclusively use its LTE baseband chipsets. The company’s policy, the Commission said, cemented its market dominance and fell foul of European Union competition rules.

Qualcomm has not commented on the latest reports, but strenuously denied any wrongdoing related to its previous European fine and lodged an appeal against the decision.

Although the potential size of a new fine was not revealed, under European commissioner for competition Margrethe Vestager (pictured), several massive fines have been levied on US-based companies. These, notably, include a number of huge penalties on Google.