ACCC draft decision confirms access to cable broadcasting networks

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today issued its draft decision to 'declare' pay television carriage services. The decision only applies to analogue services supplied over cable.

A similar service was declared in 1997. However, doubts were raised about the validity of the service description and, in order to assure the industry of certainty, the ACCC commenced inquiries into declaration of pay television carriage services under the access provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

"The ACCC is of the view that declaration should promote competition in the supply of diverse programming to consumers of such services," ACCC Chairman, Professor Allan Fels, said today.

"The ACCC anticipates that declaration would assist suppliers of niche programming services, such as foreign language and special interest channels, to gain direct access to customers. While other technologies exist for delivering services, these seem less attractive to customers than cable. The ACCC was concerned that owners of pay television cable could block access to services which competed with their fully or partly owned retail pay television services.

"The ACCC has not yet reached a decision on whether to declare a technology neutral service, which would cover digital services. However, at this stage the ACCC's preliminary view is that it would be too early to tell whether declaration may become desirable, given the early stage of the deployment of digital technology to deliver broadcasting services."

The ACCC seeks feedback on its draft report from the public and interested parties. Comments should reach the ACCC by 30 June1999. The draft report will be available on the ACCC 's Internet site, www.accc.gov.au under telecommunications.

After consideration of these comments, the ACCC will finalise its decision.