OFCOM ready to rule?

[Toto]

All in all this is good news. The consumer will have buying power, and the service providers, including Sky, will have to work hard to win our hard earned.

[Digital Fanatic]

Originally Posted by Toto

All in all this is good news. The consumer will have buying power, and the service providers, including Sky, will have to work hard to win our hard earned.

Indeed.. as should all companies... people pay good money to their providers and want value for money.

[musicbravo]

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

Sky were more than happy to take advantage of BT's network to get in to the broadband market... they are not victims by any means!

ABBAsolutely People argue that they invested so should be able to maintain inflated prices, but I ask those people this:- think about if competition was quashed in other areas of our lives. A loaf of bread would cost £6, and/or basic computers would still cost in excess of £1000 therefore not allowing a good proportion of the populous affordable access to them and sub services such as the internet.

Competition is healthy, greed is bad. SKY are like toddlers, they expect to get their own way if it benefits their stranglehold but get really upset when they finally get told off.

Originally Posted by TheDon

It's not unfair to expect them to charge a fair market price for the services, and to offer equivalent services to those that they themselves offer.

Them being able to charge anything they want limits consumer choice, and is bad not just for non-sky customers but also their own. Competition drives down prices, and competition can only thrive in an environment where all providers have access to the premium content at competitive pricing.

That no one other than Sky can offer their channels in HD, or with the red button is an obvious case of abusing a dominant market position by non-price discrimination, and it doesn't matter how much they invested on those services, they should still be offered to other carriers of the channels on a rate that allows them to offer them to their customers at a competitive price.

the HD and red button service is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers ,any good company will have unique selling points that they wouldn't other companies to have access to

what seems to be forgotten is that most of skys' sports coverage is done by sky itself and not bought in, they then sell it on to other tv companies at a profit ,if the only argument is the amount of profit that sky make on these deals then BT and Virgin should start having their own coverage thus making for better competition

[Joedm45]

Originally Posted by musicbravo

Competition is healthy, greed is bad. SKY are like toddlers, they expect to get their own way if it benefits their stranglehold but get really upset when they finally get told off.

LMFAO... That is precisely why I loathe the near monopoly that is Sky!

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

Sky were more than happy to take advantage of BT's network to get in to the broadband market... they are not victims by any means!

so why don't BT stop sky using their network? that is not a very good argument. BT were a monopoly at the time and used sky just as much to cement their position in the market place .It was a partnership deal advantagious to both companies

[Turkey Machine]

BT can't stop Sky using their network because a BT line is required for ADSL. Sky use their own kit in most of the exchanges and use BT kit when they don't have it available.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by martyh

the HD and red button service is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers ,any good company will have unique selling points that they wouldn't other companies to have access to

what seems to be forgotten is that most of skys' sports coverage is done by sky itself and not bought in, they then sell it on to other tv companies at a profit ,if the only argument is the amount of profit that sky make on these deals then BT and Virgin should start having their own coverage thus making for better competition

Just because you don't want other companies to have access to them it doesn't mean it's right that they don't. Just ask microsoft.

Yeah because it's trivial to start up a sports channel that's comparative to sky sports.

Lets just take a look at what happened to setanta when they tried to compete?

Setanta underlines exactly why Sky's market dominance is bad, the cost to market for a sports channel is insanely high, and there's a huge market apathy towards multiple providers of the same content, people don't want to pay for multiple channels for their premier league football. They want to pay one company, and have them provide it all, so anyone that doesn't have a majority of content will never gain a major market share.

Lets look at the movie channels as well, Sky have deals with all the studios, if you want to offer a range of movie channels like Sky's you'd have to outbid them for all of these deals, that's cost prohibitive when you're going up against a company that through the benefit of being first to market has developed a huge customer base and huge revenue. They don't even utilise most of the rights that they hold from movie studios (such as subscription on demand rights for the movies on their channels, if VM held the same rights as sky not only would you have the movie channels but you'd also have access to the movies played on them on demand).

Being first to market does not give you the right to dominate that market.

---------- Post added at 12:15 ---------- Previous post was at 12:13 ----------

Originally Posted by martyh

so why don't BT stop sky using their network? that is not a very good argument. BT were a monopoly at the time and used sky just as much to cement their position in the market place .It was a partnership deal advantagious to both companies

BT can't stop anyone using their network, they have a legal obligation to allow ANYONE that wants access to their network access to is, such is the downside to having a monopoly. Sky are now going to learn that the laws that helped them in broadband are also going to hinder them in TV.

Originally Posted by martyh

the HD and red button service is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers ,any good company will have unique selling points that they wouldn't other companies to have access to

what seems to be forgotten is that most of skys' sports coverage is done by sky itself and not bought in, they then sell it on to other tv companies at a profit ,if the only argument is the amount of profit that sky make on these deals then BT and Virgin should start having their own coverage thus making for better competition

The sky red button is more then a marketing startegy sky are using it more and more,and the plain fact is vm customers pay around the same as skys own customers for sky sports service,therefore should have access to it end of.

I only sub to sky for the cricket sky do the coverage in the uk,but a lot of the tv pictures around the world are done by the host country broadcaster not sky,such as the current south africa test series,sky also have an intergrated platform which means they own and deliver content thus skewing the market,to the dertriment of competiton.

Sky were in at the start so set the prices for sports/movies cable through no fault of its own was saddled with millions of debt we all saw what happened to setanta when it tried to compete with sky,sky just paid more and more for sports content setanta was forced to up and up its bids until it went bust.

Sky and espn have a different closer relationship sky markets,and provides espns pictures,the only way for the consumer to get a fair deal is through regulation of the skewed market,this is not about sky bt or vm but about the consumer.

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

Indeed.. as should all companies... people pay good money to their providers and want value for money.

yes i agree ,but forcing a company to sell it's unique product to others is not true competition ,why can't BT and Virgin produce the same service for their customers ?

I fear that any such ruling by ofcom will only result in sky withdrawing all of their channels as they did to virgin a couple of years back ,they don't have to sell their products to non sky subscribers

Originally Posted by martyh

yes i agree ,but forcing a company to sell it's unique product to others is not true competition ,why can't BT and Virgin produce the same service for their customers ?

I fear that any such ruling by ofcom will only result in sky withdrawing all of their channels as they did to virgin a couple of years back ,they don't have to sell their products to non sky subscribers

Yes they do a few years ago quite a few years ago the rate card was introduced after the on digital fiasco,which meant sky HAD to sell sports /movies to virgin media then ntl at a regulated price.

As i already said look what happened to setanta when they tried to compete with cash rich sky,if that is not a sign of a skewed market i do not know what is.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

Sky were more than happy to take advantage of BT's network to get in to the broadband market... they are not victims by any means!

Of course, it's not like they pay for use of the BT network is it?

---------- Post added at 12:36 ---------- Previous post was at 12:34 ----------

Originally Posted by richard1960

Yes they do a few years ago quite a few years ago the rate card was introduced after the on digital fiasco,which meant sky HAD to sell sports /movies to virgin media then ntl at a regulated price.

As i already said look what happened to setanta when they tried to compete with cash rich sky,if that is not a sign of a skewed market i do not know what is.

Setanta's screw ups are their own making. Nothing at all to do with Sky. They knew that Sky couldn't take all the Premiership rights so I'm not sure what Setanta's unrealistic business model for the UK has to do with things?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4975632.stm

Setanta Sports is still operating in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia and Africa.

---------- Post added at 12:41 ---------- Previous post was at 12:36 ----------

Originally Posted by TheDon

BT can't stop anyone using their network, they have a legal obligation to allow ANYONE that wants access to their network access to is, such is the downside to having a monopoly. Sky are now going to learn that the laws that helped them in broadband are also going to hinder them in TV.

Sky are required to sell channels to Virgin Media, however VM evidently don't want to pay for them, as one would expect. I find the way that the price is being calculated quite distasteful, I find Ofcom's ongoing over-regulation and attempts to meddle in pretty much every aspect of every UK market they can possibly claim a mandate over distasteful. Our broadband market actively deters investment through the poor quality, low price, low RoI services which are the norm and they appear to want to do the same to Sky.

BT's regulation is to an extent understandable, they have a natural, infrastructure based monopoly. Sky on the other hand simply invested, at their own risk, and have been successful. The message this sends out isn't one of regulating a formerly publically owned incumbent who were provided advantages through being publically owned, it's one of punishing companies that invested, took the risks and made them pay off.

Sky and BSB were both on the brink of faliing in 1990. They merged, they stuck with it, and in time they were ok.

Ofcom are 'New' Labour socialist sluts to the end sadly, and through all this they still simply don't 'get it'. I'll raise a glass when their policy meddling reign is over. It makes absolutely no sense, given that Sky have been consistently losing viewers and Europe ensured that 1/3rd of Premier League matches could not be shown by Sky, to do this now and it strikes me as a cynical well-lobbied move from a Quango whose well demonstrated socialist roots shine through in their actions and want to stick it to 'the man' before they are themselves broken up.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Setanta's screw ups are their own making. Nothing at all to do with Sky. They knew that Sky couldn't take all the Premiership rights so I'm not sure what Setanta's unrealistic business model for the UK has to do with things?

Amazing how the countries that they still have a market presence in they don't have a Sky like force to compete with isn't it?

Setanta's screw up was assuming that if they paid Sky-rates for the content they'd get sky-level subscriber numbers.

Instead they came up against the complete un-willingness for subscribers to subscribe to multiple sports channels.

Setanta's business model was only unrealistic because of Sky being such a dominant force meaning that customers who are used to getting all their premium content in one channel package didn't want to subscribe to any others so they couldn't reach the subscriber numbers needed to make it profitable.

---------- Post added at 12:51 ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 ----------

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Sky are required to sell channels to Virgin Media, however VM evidently don't want to pay for them, as one would expect. I find the way that the price is being calculated quite distasteful, I find Ofcom's ongoing over-regulation and attempts to meddle in pretty much every aspect of every UK market they can possibly claim a mandate over distasteful. Our broadband market actively deters investment through the poor quality, low price, low RoI services which are the norm and they appear to want to do the same to Sky.

Source that VM don't want to pay for them?
As everything in the ofcom consultation says they DO want to pay for them, just at a level where they can actually offer competitive pricing on them without losing money.

Ofcom should go further, the vertical integration of services and platforms should be banned, and companies broken up so all platforms have access to all content on a level playing field.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by martyh

so why don't BT stop sky using their network? that is not a very good argument. BT were a monopoly at the time and used sky just as much to cement their position in the market place .It was a partnership deal advantagious to both companies

1) They can't. In a similar manner to how Sky are required to allow Virgin Media access to some of their channels BT are obliged to sell some services.
2) Sky pay BT a fairly handy chunk of cash. It's not 'free' even though the implication seems to be that BT are doing Sky a favour here. Sky pay the same as everyone else and that price list can be seen on the BT Openreach website.

Well i think broadbandings,you are coming from the wrong angle ofcom are charged with looking after the consumer where the consumer has very little power thmeselves,as such i am on the VM platform as sky bodged up an intallation and then made four other appointments that proved equally fruitless.

Why should i be denied HD just because i cannot have sky? or the red button interactive? it is not my fault i cannot get sky. As a consumer i look to ofcom to remedy this situation, and as such i do not see this as meddling like you do but actions designed to help people like myself is that wrong.

I think in the end if no remedy is found european regulators will eventually get involved to help consumers,most commercial organisations work under some form of regulation be it supermarkets or other concerns where it is detrimental to consumers not to regulate,why should pay tv companies be any different


And by the way new Labour are far from being "socialist" if they were i may still be a member,nu-labour =pinko tories.