The Australian Competition and Consumer Competition (ACCC) is investigating its legal options to prevent incumbent telco Telstra from securing exclusive rights to national sporting events, saying “with more people watching sport on the Internet, deals giving big telecommunication companies exclusive rights to broadcast sporting events are concerning”. Telstra hit back at the remarks (ZDNet Australia) claiming it complied with the Trade Practices Act (the relevant legislation) and besides, they haven’t even launched a 3G mobile service so what are the ACCC worried about?
The watchdog often focusses on Telstra because of its aggressive business practices. For example, just before Hutchison launched the first 3G service in Australia Telstra ran a massive add campaign touting that it had its own 3G service up and running (in reality, it was a 2.5G service that qualified as 3G by only the most dodgy of definitions). It also recently landed in hot water by offering broadband services to consumers at a lower price than it charged its wholesalers – despite the fact that most of the infrastructure it uses was provided by taxpayers in the first place.
In this case though, I’m not sure the ACCC has a decent argument. If sports organizations want to sign over exclusive rights that’s their perogative, and it isn’t as if the ability to watch a sports match is a life or death situation. In the TV realm some matches are broadcast free-to-air some hours after they finish, and maybe the same sort of thing could apply to the mobile and internet world.
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