Brussels, 19/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - Less than a week after the ECCA (the European Cable Communications Association) published its position paper (see EUROPE of 14 September, p.17), three private companies, France's Canal+, the UK's Sky and Italy's Tele+, expressed their grievances on Tuesday at the European Parliament concerning the EP's amendments to the Electronic Communications Package that seek to require digital TV operators to use a particular interface for conditional access modules.
The amendments to the EU Electronic Communications Package of Directives were adopted on first reading by the Parliament. The first set requires the use of the MHP (Media Home Platform) standard, while the other requires the use of a common interface for the insertion of different conditional access (CA) modules, irrespective of the country or the platform used by the operators, to enable consumers to have access to all digital television channels through the standardisation of decoder boxes and receiving devices.
The European Commission and the Council (in their common position last June) rejected these amendments. On the eve of the second reading in Parliament, scheduled for the October plenary session, representatives from Sky, Canal+ and Tele+ reiterated their opposition to the amendments and explained the reasoning behind it to MEPs. Robin Crossley for Sky and Eric Lambert for Canal+ argued that there was no need to mandate a standard to guarantee access in the Community. Both felt that the Council's common position on the Access and Interconnection Directive would allow Member States to require operators of CA services to offer access to all broadcasters on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Access by service providers will therefore be guaranteed through legislation. They also stressed the draft Framework Directive's requirement "that there should be no discrimination in favour of the use of a particular type of technology". Messrs Crossley and Lambert explained that the adoption of the proposed standardised technologies would not necessarily achieve interoperability since TV reception equipment does not comprise the same hardware. Likewise, even with the MHP standard or a common interface, set-top boxes may remain network-specific and not be able to run, for example, an interactive application which is broadcast on a satellite platform because they do not contain a satellite tuner.
The "Pay TV" representatives raised the issue of the complexity of the MHP standard and the additional costs occasioned by a compulsory interface or compulsory MHP, costs that would be borne by consumers, they argued. They explained that the additional costs would prevent digital operators from continuing to provide set-top boxes free of charge to their customers, as many do at the moment and the operators would also have to write off the investment they have made in such operations. BSkyB, for example, has invested around EUR 3.2 billion in providing its 5.5 million customers with a free desk-top box.