Saturday 8 March 2014

CCI rejects Dish TVs complaint against MSOs

Competition Commission of India (CCI) on 07th March has rejected direct-to-home (DTH) operators Dish TV complaint against six multi-system operators (MSOs) for “abuse of dominance” against broadcasters. 
Dish TV had filed a complaint against Hathway Cable and Datacom, DEN Networks, Siti Cable, Gujarat Telelinks Pvt Ltd (GTPL), Fastway Transmission and Sumangali Cable Vision (SCV) alleging that they were charging high carriage and placement fee and under-reporting of subscribers vis-à-vis broadcasters. 

The payment of such high fees by broadcasters was reducing the MSOs net content cost vis-à-vis the DTH operators which destroyed the level playing field and the DTH operators were unable to compete despite having a more efficient technology and a better quality product. 
This, the DTH operator contended, amounts to abuse of dominance under the provisions of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002. 
CCI in its order states that the material and information presented to the commission on record shows that Dish TV’s allegation do not pertain to abuse of dominance by any one of the MSO in a specific area. In fact, the DTH operator has attributed collective dominance to all the MSOs in the geographical markets of their operation and collective abuse. 
However, the commission noted that the Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002 does not cover abuse of collective dominance. “Appraisal of Section 4 and 5 makes it abundantly clear that Competition Act, 2002 covers dominance of one enterprise or a group of enterprise,” the fair trade commission stated. 
The Section 4 of the Act provides that “no enterprise or group shall abuse its dominant position” with “group” defined as two or more enterprises which, directly or indirectly, are in a position to 1) exercise 26 percent or more of the voting rights in the other enterprise; 2) or appoint more than 50 per cent of the members of the board of directors in the other enterprise; or 3) control the management or affairs of the other enterprise”. 
“In view of the above discussion, there does not exist a prima facie case for causing an investigation to be made by the Director General under Section 26(1) of the Act. It is a fit case for closure under 26(2) of the Act and the same is hereby closed,” the CCI said in its order.

Source:
http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/4401-cci-rejects-dish-tvs-complaint-against-msos.html
Source: http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/4401-cci-rejects-dish-tvs-complaint-against-msos.html

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