Spark has expressed its concerns over the proposed merger between Vodafone and Sky by making a submission to the Commerce Commission, New Zealand’s competition regulator.
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Facing what Spark says will cost it $60 million per year more than anticipated, the company is, in the public eye, in a state of shock and turmoil. But some are saying the shock should have, and possibly would have, been anticipated.
Labour’s broadcasting spokesperson Kris Faafoi and associate ICT spokesperson Clare Curran have labelled the warning given to Sky TV by the Commerce Commission over its contracts with content deliverers as a slap with a wet bus ticket.
Demand for mobile data in New Zealand has almost doubled for the second year in a row, as the cost of data decreases and the number of smartphones in Kiwi hands increase.
Vodafone was fined $960,000 today on 21 charges brought by the Commerce Commission over marketing campaigns that breached the Fair Trading act and this figure adds to fines of almost $500,000 imposed in 2011 for six other Fair Trading Act charges, making it the highest total imposed on a single defendant under the act.
The Commerce Commission’s 2011 telecommunications annual monitoring report shows competition among telcos is heating up—and consumers, who doubled their consumption of mobile data since last year, are getting better and more diverse deals as a result.
2degrees has sought urgent Commerce Commission action to stop Telecom from damaging competition in the mobile market. Telecom has confirmed it will lock the phones of customers who buy its planned ‘Skinny’ product, forcing them to pay a fee if they want to leave before a certain time. ‘SIM-locking’ is an anti-competitive practice the Commerce Commission warned against in 2008, when Vodafone tried to get away with it. Vodafone backed down after receiving a letter stating the practice was anti-competitive
It seems not all is well and fair in land of telco advertising. While Vodafone may be busy reviewing its agency partners, the Commerce Commission has been busy reviewing Vodafone over allegations it has been misleading customers with its broadband and mobile phone promotions between 2006 and 2009. Six cases have been brought up against Vodafone and the first of those to reach court has resulted in the telco being fined $402,375 plus court costs late last week after it pleaded guilty to breaching the Fair Trading Act in relation to its Vodafone Live! mobile phone internet service. Vodafone says it will defend the charges for the remaining five cases.
Clients signing exclusive deals with media owners is an issue we’ve been hearing about a lot recently. And it seems to have come to a head, with ACP fronting up to the Commerce Commission to defend the practice and rumours abounding of editors not attending product launches and threatening to pull editorial endorsements for companies that have signed exclusive deals with competing publishers.