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Originally Posted by ahardie
I haven't ever heard anyone say that Sky is a monopoly. The fear is that they will eventually become a monopoly. Sky has so much money that if they decide to squeeze other platforms by denying them content then there is nothing to stop them. At least when VM owned some channels they had some leverage over Sky. Now they have nothing. VM used the sale of the channels to gain some of Sky's exclusive channels to give them a fighting chance to compete against them. Look what has happened. Sky has bought loads of content that they could have put on their existing channels and put it on a new exclusive channel. How any customer would say that is not a bad thing is beyond me. The different platforms should be competing on price and level of service not channel exclusivity.
If Sky were split up they would still have the incentive to make money that any company has. It's not going to happen though. What we need is for Ofcom to take a stand on this blatant anti-competitive and anti consumer behaviour but Murdoch has too much political influence for that to happen.
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But if Sky is split it wouldn't really have the same incentive as it does now.
Why would Sky release Atlantic HD just for the sake of it as a platform provider if the release does not specifically strengthen Sky's own position? The argument to split is all good and well except that it would actually leave Sky customers worse off.
I really do find it strange that some people say Sky should be asked to split. So basically people would want a situation where Virgin make no investment in actual channels whereas Sky do but Virgin have all the benefits of that channel investment that Sky have made.
Sky hold a strong market position because they are the ones that put their hands in their pockets and made the risky decisions to invest. Virgin have washed their hands of any kind of such investment and taken a low risk strategy of being a platform provider only.