Thread: sky movies (excess profits)
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Old 11-02-2011, 13:09   #57
TheDon
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Re: sky movies (excess profits)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignitionnet View Post
Sky's EPG is open, this is enforced as part of their operating licence.
It may be "open" but the EPG queue has been closed for a long time now due to limitations with their SD boxes channel capacity.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignitionnet View Post
Given that Virgin Media's predecessors both went through bankruptcy protection and debt for equity swaps this is debatable and within VM's passed areas there is no way that replicating their network could be done financially viably as the market is saturated. To be viable a new entrant would need to capture nearly half of the customer base in the area. The penetration of altnet services in Europe is sub-20% and price pressures are heavy right now.

This same argument could be applied to BT in areas where they overlap Virgin Media, and to an extent is, however this only applies to the charges BT are allowed to levy in the areas all open access obligations remain.

Regardless being a monopoly isn't the issue, the question is one of Significant Market Power.

Do Sky have SMP within Pay TV - yes, which is why they are regulated.
Do BT have SMP - yes, which is why they are regulated.
Do Virgin Media have SMP - within their passed areas clearly yes, however Ofcom side-step this by taking their market share nationwide.

Kingston Communications have regional SMP while VM don't. There are a number of contradictions however cable has been favoured since its conception.
I don't disagree that in areas passed VM have a very strong footing, however if this translates to SMP in those areas isn't quite as black and white.

SMP would mean that in those areas they can dictate terms, but we don't see them able to do that. That Sky can continually withhold channels from them shows that VM's MP isn't that significant. On a region level for broadband you can easily argue that it is, but for TV the situation is far more difficult to judge.

I think VM gets away with it's SMP on broadband due to it lacking SMP on TV, when you look at the company as a whole you can't say that VM has SMP, but when you break it down into the individual components (TV, phone, BB) then you can easily see signs of SMP.

So is having SMP in one aspect of your business enough for regulation? Apparently Ofcom don't think so.
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