OFCOM pay TV review

Virgin's Chief Executive Neil Berkett has said that he believes that the OFCOM review on UK Pay TV will possibly force Sky to make its Sports and Movie high definition services available to other services such as cable. He may be right but The Guardian thinks that this saga will run and run and run:

"Next week, the Ofcom board will get its latest fix of the long-running regulatory soap opera that is the pay TV review. After three years of argument, the meeting is likely to decide the parameters of this summer's report on Sky's perceived dominance of the market in premium sports and movies. Sky's rivals hope that the Ofcom decision will change the market for pay TV in this country. This it may well do, but whether it will allow smaller rivals to flourish is far less clear.

"Ofcom is preparing to require Sky to make its premium channels available to other operators on regulated wholesale terms...Nothing that Ofcom proposes is likely to stop appeals from either Sky or the original complainants, and even then the basic issue - Sky's dominance of the pay TV market - will most likely remain unresolved."

Full story here
Do the high definition versions of the channels qualify in their own right as "premium"? Virgin may well be arguing that they do, but if OFCOM demand that they are made available at a '"fair" price, that could prove to be beyond Virgin's pockets or what Mr Berkett is willing to pay. As always, you are recommended to continue your normal breathing practises whilst we wait to find out...