Competition Commission of India (CCI): A complaint filed by Dish TV, a Direct-To-Home (DTH) operator against six Multi-System Operators (MSOs), including Den Networks and Hathway Cable & Datacom, alleging that they abused their dominant market position by charging high carriage and placement fee for carrying and placing their channels on the desired bandwidth on their cable network was rejected by CCI. The complainant had alleged in the complaint that the payment of such high fees by broadcasters was reducing the Opposite Party’s net content cost, vis-a vis competitor’s namely DTH operators. By this mode, the MSOs were destroying the level playing field and the DTH operators were unable to compete despite having a more efficient technology and a better quality product, which amounts to abuse of dominance under the provisions of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002. After hearing the matter, CIC observed that the allegations of complainant does not pertain to abused of dominance by any one of the Opposite Parties in a specific geographic region but the Informant has attributed collective dominance to all the Opposite Parties together, in the geographical markets of their operation and collective abuse. While perusing S.4 of the Act and referring to an earlier judgment of the Commission in Consumer Online Foundation Informant vs. Tata Sky Ltd. (Case 2/2009), CCI reiterated that Indian law does not recognize collective abuse of dominance as there is no concept of “collective dominance” in India and held that there was no prima facie case against the Multi-System Operators. (Dish TV India Ltd. v. Hathway Cable & Datacom Ltd., Case No. 78 of 2013, decided on March 6, 2014)
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:01:34 +0000