The financial regulator in Germany is a strange direction from which to hear criticism of pay TV services, from companies as diverse as Premiere (satellite TV partly owned now by News Corp) and Kabel Deutschland and Unity Media, the top two cable operators there.
But the monopoly investigators at Bundeskartellamt (literally Cartel Commission) are looking into the provision of set tops among these leading pay TV providers, concerned that mandatory set-top boxes are impeding competition.
Whether the set top boxes are compulsory or just necessary to receive the service, and whether or not a retail market can be made using standard devices from consumer electronics companies, represents the same dilemma that led to CableCard in the US and the DVB-CI slot elsewhere ‘ and the answer is the same, the separation of conditional access from set top capabilities. And in a similar way the use of OCAP or Tru2way is part of the same process ‘ a Java based virtual machine to house the set top capabilities. Germany is perhaps coming at this rather late, but may be about to mandate the use of these technologies.
The regulator is reacting to consumer complaints because they find that when they move house or change providers the set top they have paid for becomes useless. The issue is also affecting the ability of smaller pay TV operators to provide top of the line set tops.
So far the European Commission has shown no intention of taking up the issue but if the German competition regulator gets its way, there will be every reason for other regulators throughout Europe to push for the same kind of changes.