Quote:
Originally Posted by zantarous
On the one hand I want Sky HD and red button on VM but on the other hand I can see Sky's point as well, they took all the risk and made the investment which paid of and now they may be forced to supply content cheaper to their rivals? Are there any other industries where a similar thing happens? BT comes to mind with unbundling their exchanges but that was built with tax payer money.
The cable companies were happy to sit back and do nothing about investing in their future, although that was probably due to being crippled by the cost of laying cables. It is about time there was a fair playing field, but a lack of vision,the stupid idea of cable franchise has hindered the industry far more then Sky.
Horizon's post sound interesting but lets hope we don't have to wait for ever to see these new applications.
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"cheaper" = at a price where they actually have an incentive to sell the services, rather than one where they make nothing, very little, or lose money. Not to mention that it's not just about cheaper, but also comparable. The red button is non-price discrimination which is simply unacceptable.
As for other industries where a similar thing happens, every single utility, and for the mother of all "monopolies" go look at microsoft. There really is an example of a company that drove innovation and then got royally screwed over because they happened to be successful. Sky should think themselves VERY lucky that they're only dealing with ofcom and not the EU competition commission because they would split the company in two at the drop of a hat.
Sky's position also seems to be one of pointing at VM and going "well they didn't invest, so they lose!" but it ignores the fact that the cable franchises in the early days were predominately just broadcast platforms, and only picked up TV channels later to try to compete, at a time when the market for premium content was already wrapped up, and with Sky's market penetration and content lock-in it's near impossible to actually compete with their channels, as setanta did a great job of showing.