Aussie Regulator On Alert Over Mobile Content War

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is continuing to say that mobile content needs to be regulated to ensure “that existing players not be allowed to use their market power to strangle at birth these new forms of competition. It is vital, therefore, that no single carrier acquires exclusive rights to all that content and effectively locks out the potential competition.” Being Australia, most of the content being argued about is sports. At first interested in Telstra‘s move to get exclusive mobile rights to the two dominant football codes the ACCC now has to expand its questioning to cover other mobile carriers. Optus has captured exclusive rights to the English Premier League in soccer as well as The Wiggles and Teletubbies, while 3 has laid claim to Cricket. Optus has argued that it is only buying exclusive content because Telstra (the largest player) is forcing it to, while Telstra claims it is the sports leagues that offer exclusivity to get a premium price.

Of course, this will all get complicated if mobile phones which can receive broadcast signals hit the market. I think the ACCC is worried needlessly. While Telstra is the largest player in Australia the other companies are big and ugly enough to take care of themselves, and it is a very small segment of the population that will buy a mobile phone service specifically because it has a sports code on it. The issue does raise the spectre of regulation of mobile content as governments try to protect the interests of its citizens (or in some cases, its businesses).

Related stories:
ACCC investigates Telstra advantage on sporting content

Comments have been disabled for this post