CYTA, LTV say they have intent to cooperate

LTV and CYTA announced to the Competition Commission that no formal agreement exists between the two for content provision, adding that they only have an “intent” to cooperate.

The move is seen as taking the heat off Competition Commissioner Georgos Christofides, who needs to make a decision soon on whether or not the deal stifles competition.

The Competition Commission is currently investigating allegations by private telecom providers that the intended collaboration between the two organisations breaches anti-trust laws and creates a super-monopoly aimed at killing competition.

LTV is supposed to give football, other sports and movies content to CYTA’s miVision platform, and at the same time, LTV will also provide the same content to Multichoice until 2010. After that, LTV wants to give its content exclusively to miVision.

The Commission is probing whether the arrangement between LTV and their platform administrators Multichoice (MCC) is exclusive and therefore illegal. To complicate matters further, LTV has offered to buy out 100% of MCC’s shares, but only on condition that their arrangement is found to be illegal by the Commission.

Christofides said that his agency had sent out a “statement of objections” to CyTA and LTV. The statement of objections is essentially a “charge sheet” listing any breaches of competition. The two corporations need to respond to the statement of objections by May 22 and, depending on their answers, the Commission would then decide whether penalties should be imposed. Meanwhile LTV’s offer to buy out MCC expires on May 29.