Telecom Paper said this week that in the wake of the Ziggo-Vodafone deal, competition regulator ACM (Authority for Consumers and Markets) will begin a fresh analysis to see if the merger distorts Netherlands operator markets.
There is nothing to be found on the ACM website, which suggests that this was a behind the scenes explanation of what IS on its website, and that as yet there is little official that has happened on this assessment.
It has already shown that it was clearly upset by this merger being allowed to go ahead. Already Liberty Global’s UPC had been allowed by the European Commission to merge, resulting in one player having around 65% of pay TV, and 50% of broadband. The merger of Vodafone as well, turns this into a quad play, and no similar territory in Europe has been allowed to concentrate anything like this amount of market power. Other deals in Denmark and the UK were refused when they reduced cellular operators down to three players, but in Netherlands at least there seems to be no problem with pay TV and broadband dominance at the European Commission.
The ACM had begged the European Commission to be allowed to regulate its own market, and been turned down in regard to both mergers.
But what did appear on the ACM site this week was news that it is also interested in what is happening in online platforms which offer videos and movies. It mentions YouTube, Facebook and local Dutch platforms NL-ziet and Dumpert. But it does not mention specifically Horizon Go and MyPrime, owned by Ziggo, or the KPN equivalent.
A brief video suggests that what the ACM is really interested in is how these manage their relationships with content owners, and what data they collect on consumers and how they use it. Monetization is another aspect it plans to look into and results will be out by the end of the year.
ACM will not just look at the platforms themselves, but also at the businesses that are somehow connected to them such as media agencies, digital marketplaces where advertisement space is bought and sold, and producers of content for these platforms. This is a fast growing market, and also a market on which major national and international businesses are active.
It wants to look at the various terms and conditions, and businesses models of these platforms; advertisement options, and revenues from advertisements; and where the online videos are distributed. Programmatic advertising seems to be one of its key focuses.
It basically wants to see if this market has been distorted by the local mergers we suspect, and look into wholesale broadband access as well, and how that is affected by the arrival of G.fast and DOCSIS 3.1. So perhaps it DOES have something to do with the Ziggo mergers after all.
Vodafone didn’t exactly add much fixed line broadband to the merger, because most of its broadband was wholesaled from Telco KPN, but it has customers it can bring, even if it cannot bring infrastructure.