Com Hem is crying foul over the bundling of rights by Telia in the auction ordered by the European Commission as part of the telco’s acquisition of Bonnier Broadcasting.
It claims more rights have been included in the package than the Commission intended.
The cablenet says Telia is deliberately “locking in” streaming of commercial channel TV4, restricting competition in the media market. Com Hem has now reported Telia to the Commission’s Monitoring Trustee.
At issue are the terms of the auction that would mean only one player other than Telia itself would have access to TV4’s catchup services.
“It is regrettable that Telia continues to try to limit and lock in, instead of letting TV4 continue as a channel for the whole of Sweden. They’ve create Sweden’s first state pay channel, at the expense of TV4’s reach, Swedish media diversity and Swedish media production. It is surprising that the state continues to let this happen in silence,” says Anders Nilsson, CEO, Tele2 Group.
The basic agreement to broadcast TV4, Sjuan, TV12 and C More is fixed and carriage of the linear channels continues.
