OTTAWA – The CRTC has returned applications filed by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and Consumers’ Association of Canada (CAC) challenging the tied selling of streaming services CraveTV and shomi to existing TV subscription services, citing Thursday’s Let’s Talk decisions.
A March 12 letter addressed to the consumer groups and signed by secretary general John Traversy said that the PIAC-CAC applications “would benefit from taking into consideration the Commission’s clarifications” in BRP 2015-86 in which the CRTC said that it would add a hybrid VoD service as a new type of exempt undertaking. “Accordingly, by majority decision, the Commission returns these applications”, the letter continues.
But PIAC-CAC said in a statement that they are “skeptical” that the decision is enough to motivate Bell, Rogers and Shaw to make their content available online to all Canadians as true over-the-top services. Noting that the decision did not identify CraveTV and shomi as hybrids, PIAC-CAC said that it appears as though the Commission will allow the closed, tied model to continue, and that they are therefore “considering whether to bring fresh applications, as the CRTC suggested they could in light of these decisions”.
“Although the Commission’s emphasis in this particular decision is on helping VOD services compete on an “equal footing” with online video services, PIAC-CAC believe that online video services, particularly small competitors, are the ones that face a structural disadvantage against the large, vertically integrated companies (owning both broadcasting content and internet access services) implicated in today’s decision”, reads the statement posted on PIAC’s website. “In PIAC-CAC’s view, that disadvantage harms competition and consumer choice.”
Stay tuned, as they say.
