Quote:
Originally Posted by mersey70
Sky have a monopoly on Sports do they?
News to me. That little piddly organisation called ESPN may well disagree, and the European Commission. Barclays Premier League, Clydesdale Bank Premier League, Europa League, FA Cup, Aviva Premiership and on and on but of course it attracts a separate subscription. Not to mention Formula 1, NPower Football league, FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, Carling Cup, 6 Nations, Horseracing, The Open, Wimbledon etc etc on terrestrial amongst many other sports.
And what about Filmflex, Picturebox, BT Vision PPV movies.
It's EVERYONES prices that need looking at in my opinion.
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You know what I meant with my post about the monopoly bit.
For most people if you want certain sports you need Sky sub or you are limited to whats available, ESPN havn't been around long enough to really have an impact but may in the future.
Sky have for years been buying up all the premium content on sports they can and have done the same for movies, its why they are on the rate card so have to be sold at a reasonable rate in comparison to what they charge their own subscribers.
What we really need is for Sky to be broken up into content and provision with content having to treat all customers equally on price and access.
BT should have the same with infrastructure and provision seperate with all having access to BT network for the same price.
You could then have an argument for VM being the same, until that then opening up VM to others will put them at a disadvantage especially to Sky who have no infrastructure of their own beyond LLU that anyone else could access.
---------- Post added at 13:48 ---------- Previous post was at 13:41 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
A major problem with your entire post, just like VM you want it both ways. You want to be able to claim private money built private networks so shouldn't be opened up then you want to scream monopoly.
You want to highlight how Sky monopolise content and raise the barriers to entry while ignoring how high the barriers are to entry should anyone decide they want to compete on similar terms to Virgin Media - they are far higher.
You comment on BT building their new network and it being subject to the same restrictions as their publicly built network but don't actually say why beyond mentioning the public funding they are receiving in Cornwall. Outside of Cornwall and other areas where some public subsidy is being provided where's the case to force open access?
Ebbsfleet and all other BT new builds are required to be open access yet BT are the only company that would have this restriction applied, VM could be the sole provider of TV / telco / broadband services and don't have to open up their network.
Where people are barred from putting up dishes people have a choice of VM or BT Vision, yet it's perfectly fine for VM to keep their network closed even in this case. Why?
You can't have it both ways. Either regulation is fair and applies to everyone evenly or it's arbitrary. The constant ignorance of those cases where VM hold over 51% of the retail and wholesale (to themselves) markets while coming down hard on Sky and BT are arbitrary - there is a perfectly reasonable case to regulate both, even Europe are pursuing it, yet the regulator here constantly turns a blind eye despite being ahead of the rest of Europe with regulation of BT and Sky.
The other odd comment focuses on how regulating Sky Movies is good for the consumer, so should be pursued. Surely mandating access to Virgin Media's network, allowing others to offer differentiating products or reducing the barrier to a third party deploying FTTH/B, is also a good thing for the consumer?
It's really quite perverse how many people are pro-consumer when it comes to Sky and BT but get defensive when it comes to Virgin Media. Let's get those ducts opened up and see who comes to put some glass to our homes - think of what an effect on our market a real fibre optic network will have.
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Simple answer is BT network was built with tax payers money and so why shouldn't we have access.
As to Ebbsfleet etc they signed the deal, if they didn't like it they didn't have to.
And what is pro consumer allowing Sky to get access to VM network and selling BB at a loss like they do now on BT network leaving VM customers with a poorer service due to contention issues.
If others want a fiber network like VM then do what they did and BT are doing, build your own.
Lastly if public mone is used then access should be granted to the network. Or do you want to pay for something you can't use, I don't.....