SKY Monopoly

MrAnarchy

Lately I have become worried about Sky's Dominance in the Irish and UK Market.
With DTT in tatters and RTE cashstrapped ,Sky's position has become alot stronger.
I dont think we will ever see a Satellite competitor for SKY in the British Isles due to the stranglehold that Sky has on the VideoGuard encryption system.
Its sole purpose for giving away non CI boxes was to create a monopoly and limit viewers satellite provider options.
Cable companies will be there but these are intrinsically linked to Sky programming.
Now that Sky have developed such a large Digital subscriber group you would think that prices should come down or at least stay the same.
Obviously the more people subscribing the more money they make and hence the average cost decreases.
Sky have set a target of 200-250 pounds income per subscriber.They have made no secret that they want to increase this .
Dont get me wrong here.I am not a whinger and I gladly pay my 36 pounds per month.Damn good value in my opinion.
The only thing is that if one company becomes too strong ,i.e Microsoft then they can eventually charge inflated prices for their products and their is very little incentive to improve the existing service.

Hi Mr anarchy.
Sky are already charging too much imho, and whilst theres no real competition, you can bet your bottom dollar, they will be sending another letter out announcing another rise.
The charge for their movie package should be in the high twenties and not the high thirties.
Just think about it-more people would take it as opposed to the family package.
The age of the films they show and how often they are repeated,tells me, theres an overcharge.
Couple that with the fact that they have add revenue aswell-Something other platforms do not have.

Being a monopoly Sky can get away with this.I would guess aswell that their original decision to give away free boxes was an important one,in that it meant any potential competitor would have their work cut out for them raising finance.

With all the housing gone up in the greater Dublin area in the last five years,NTL's customer base is growing.Unfortunately in their case globally they are Financially very sick.
A cable operation in private hands in Dublin would be a match for Sky,assuming it got the finance for digital rollout.
RTE/Telecom Eireann should have held on to Cablelink.It might have been a good decision in the short term to sell it ,but in the longer term it was a disaster.

DTT here is in the hands of a private company and not RTE.
From what I've read, they will get finance eventually,it's only a matter of time.
Post september 11th would not have helped them.Lots of finance houses have pulled in their horns so to speak in recent months.But that cannot last forever as unless the market for venture capital is vibrant , they lose out.
So patience needed on all fronts and maybe hopefully Murdock will get a run for his money.
mm

ONireland

See www.david.laverty.com/misc/monopoly/frames.htm



Sorry, but I made this ages ago and it just kinda suits the thread title!

SkepticOne

Originally posted by madman
RTE/Telecom Eireann should have held on to Cablelink.It might have been a good decision in the short term to sell it ,but in the longer term it was a disaster.

They were forced to sell it by the Government. The reason given was that while it was owned by RTE and Telecom, investment in upgrading was unlikely as this would have meant increased competition with these two companies. There's no way Telecom would have invested in upgrading the system to two-way as this would have meant internal competition with their fixed line business. Similarly, RTE would not have been pleased with the competition from extra channels diluting its advertising revenue.

The whole thing failed though for two reasons:

1. Insufficient conditions were attached to the sale. For example, no requirement to upgrade to two-way standards. This was the Governments fault.

2. It was sold to NTL who paid over the odds for cablelink and then proceeded to buy up cable systems around Europe at inflated prices. This was at the height of the hi-tech boom which has now crashed.

It would be unreasonable to expect the government to have predicted the second reason above. Everything looked rosy at the time. However they should have got more of a commitment from NTL to upgrade here. This would have meant less money for NTL to purchase other cable systems around Europe but they would be in a stronger position here against Sky.

I don't consider Sky to have the monopoly yet. I think the basic product all these companies are supplying is TV channels. The digital aspect of it is irrelavent to most people. In any case, NTL are simply using digital techniques to get more channels down a narrow pipe.

In the US, 60 to 80 channels is the norm for analogue cable TV, 200+ for digital.

NTL still have 300,000 subscribers.
I agree, though, that it is not a level playing field. I don't see why conditions should not be attached to Sky here like in Britain. Sky is not a British company either, being based in Luxemberg.

They should be made to carry Irish channels for nothing if they want to operate here just like the Irish cable companies. They should also be levied in a similar way.

Nevertheless, NTL and Chorus would still have a lot of catching up to do if they want to stop the erosion of their customer base.

My suggestion to them is to either get the finance and upgrade to full two-way cable systems and increase the number of channels greatly or, failing that, sell up and cut their losses.

Agreed SkepticOne,

How ever, in hindsight,if Telecom Eireann owned Cable link in full and subsequently Eircom owned it in full-there may have been an opportunity to develope the network,It would just have been a question of which was going to be more profitable,and profit is profit regardless of which part of the company.
The government could have regulated that Digital Roll out should happen if Eircom owned Cablelink.
But I suppose considering recent events,finding the money wouldn't be easy.
But there was no crystal ball to tell the Government about the Earthquake of events since the mid ninties,so what happened happened.
mm

chernobyl

Originally posted by MrAnarchy

I dont think we will ever see a Satellite competitor for SKY in the British Isles

There is no competition aimed directly aimed at the british market, but a broader european market, it exists and if you truely wanted a Sky alternative you would have it.

Originally posted by MrAnarchy

due to the stranglehold that Sky has on the VideoGuard encryption system.

What? what? what?

VG is up for sale from NDS to whoever wants it, BT use it in their cross atlantic phone systems.
And VG is possibly a far too expensive encryption method for most ok, but that does not mean that there are secure alternatives, infact there are many, much cheaper and readily available.

Originally posted by MrAnarchy
Its sole purpose for giving away non CI boxes was to create a monopoly and limit viewers satellite provider options..

Sky do provide a CI system, where do you stick the smart card?
Sky's reasons for producing a STB+CAM on a single PCB is two folded, cost and security.
Thats a stupid argument, Sky Digiboxes are for viewing Sky channels and if you want more options then buy a real STB!

Genghis

Originally posted by SkepticOne
I don't see why conditions should not be attached to Sky here like in Britain. Sky is not a British company either, being based in Luxemberg.

They should be made to carry Irish channels for nothing if they want to operate here just like the Irish cable companies. They should also be levied in a similar way.

SkepticOne - do you know if that is what the UK government did 'in a nutshell', or was there more to it than that. Just interested ...

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Genghis


SkepticOne - do you know if that is what the UK government did 'in a nutshell', or was there more to it than that. Just interested ...

I know they are required to carry certain BBC channels and these are available for nothing with the FTV card.

I'm not sure what legal right the British government have to impose this, but whatever it is, I'm sure it applies here as well.

If the Irish Government imposed similar conditions on Sky i.e. if Sky want to sell their services here, they must carry all the Irish channels for nothing and allow the use of an FTV card, then we'd get digital TV on the cheap for far less than digital terrestrial.

Again, I'm not 100% sure what the legal position here is.

Originally posted by SkepticOne:

If the Irish Government imposed similar conditions on Sky i.e. if Sky want to sell their services here, they must carry all the Irish channels for nothing and allow the use of an FTV card, then we'd get digital TV on the cheap for far less than digital terrestrial.

Well unless I've missed something,there is no part of the 2001 act that allows for this.
It could have been done,but probably wasn't as, the Irish government would not like to be seen to be doing something to help Sky, an outfit that causes 200K subscribers to send money out of the country.

Regarding Digital terrestrial: You would want a crystal Ball to know what they will charge for their service.
As it stands, neither RTE or the Govt want FTV RTE and TV3 etc on Sky-so you will have to fork out family package Euro's to get it.

Pure Economics will demand that any DTT operator in ROI will have to be cometitively priced.

The pieces of this Jig-saw are coming together, in that the legislation that is there coupled with RTE's reluctance to want a FTV card will surely help any DTT operator.

And as that seems to be the only hope for the Competition needed to get UTV and CH 4 etc on the Irish Sky EPG-I'm all in favour of it.
mm

MrAnarchy

'There is no competition aimed directly aimed at the british market, but a broader european market, it exists and if you truely wanted a Sky alternative you would have it'

The alternative is mostly non English channels.Not much good to the vast majority of people.


'due to the stranglehold that Sky has on the VideoGuard encryption system'

This is true.NDS is a Murdoch company .Can you get a Videoguard CAM ? No you cant hence it is a stranglehold.You have to buy a Sky box.Nothing wrong with that.

Sky boxes have a built in Videoguard CAM so essentially they dont have an accessible CI..
In Spain the Government stepped in when rival Satellite providers decided to use different encryption systems so as to lock subscribers into their package.The Authorities blocked this and decreed that all providers use the same encryption.

NDS by the way are 12 Billion Pounds in debt.They are expected to tell half of their creditors that they will be unable to pay them (5.7 Billion).
This is a sorry state of affairs for a company who thought they could buy success.

chernobyl

Originally posted by MrAnarchy
The alternative is mostly non English channels.Not much good to the vast majority of people.

You obviously dont have them so..."no comment"

Originally posted by MrAnarchy
This is true.NDS is a Murdoch company .Can you get a Videoguard CAM ? No you cant hence it is a stranglehold.You have to buy a Sky box.Nothing wrong with that.

NDS is 80% News Corp, the other 20% i could not find who owns it.


You cant get a CAM currently by offical means but last year NDS put Videoguard info up for sale which was purchased by an unknown italian source and is believed will produce a CAM this year.
CAM non availability is for security reasons and for Sky to operate on a decoder you need the Sky OS running on your STB, so it makes sense to combine a STB with the CAM.
How many Hummys run the Sky OS?

Originally posted by MrAnarchy
Sky boxes have a built in Videoguard CAM so essentially they dont have an accessible CI..

yeah right, done and dusted me there....

Originally posted by MrAnarchy
NDS by the way are 12 Billion Pounds in debt.They are expected to tell half of their creditors that they will be unable to pay them (5.7 Billion).
This is a sorry state of affairs for a company who thought they could buy success.

Heres another quote you might find interesting.

"quote"
Record Quarter for NDS

Highlights for the quarter include 10% increase in revenue (to $89 million) and 13% increase in operating income (to $24.8 million). During the quarter, BSkyB launched Sky+ using XTV™ software, and interactive applications went live in the UK and Latin America
"/quote"

I doubt the entire NDS corporation is worth $1 Billion so how they got 12 in debt is amazing.

cableskeptic

Originally posted by MrAnarchy
NDS by the way are 12 Billion Pounds in debt.They are expected to tell half of their creditors that they will be unable to pay them (5.7 Billion).
This is a sorry state of affairs for a company who thought they could buy success.

Surely not? Have you a ref for this? The £12 billion debt and the other details sounds too much like NTL and not not NDS?

MrAnarchy

Oops !!
Silly old me.
Of course that should be NTL !
How the hell did I type NDS ?

You obviously dont have them so..."no comment"

Correct to a point.My Next door neighbour has a motorised 1.2m dish.
I had planned to get one too but when I saw how few decent 'English' channels (films,sport,drama series) there were available I decided to hold back for the time being at least.
However if you know otherwise I would be very grateful.
From what I can see the English language broadcasting rights for the whole of Europe would be prohibitively expensive and hence most of the available channels are in German and Italian.

chernobyl

Every PPV movie/football match generally has a secondary audio layer which is english.

You should not be buying a "european" satellite system to watch standard programming like buffy or whatever it may be, as murdoch will always have that first, you get it to watch games like Manchester UTD v Sunderland which is only Canal+ Norway, maybe its on MUTV, i dunno....
Else you get it to go feed huntning.