Paris, 23 March 2007
The Law of 9 July 2004 transposing the directives of the 2002 "Telecoms packet" assigned the regulation of audiovisual broadcasting networks to ARCEP.
Today, ARCEP is implementing the regulation measures it defined upon completing its market analysis in 2006.
In this framework, ARCEP is publishing its first digital terrestrial broadcasting report, which presents the market share of the incumbent TDF and its competitors on the digital terrestrial broadcasting market which was recently opened to competition.
- Review of the current framework
On 6 April 2006, ARCEP completed its wholesale market analysis of audiovisual broadcasting services. At that time it adopted two decisions. They cover:
- the definition of the relevant wholesale market for digital terrestrial broadcasting offers, and the designation of an operator having significant market power
- the obligations imposed on TDF as a powerful operator on this market
ARCEP considered that it was necessary to put in place ex ante regulation on this wholesale market upstream of terrestrial broadcasting services, whether analogue or digital. Suppliers and their clients are all broadcasters on this market (TDF, Towercast, OneCast and the multiplex operator CNH which self broadcasts in part).
ARCEP also designated TDF, which controls almost all digital terrestrial broadcasting infrastructures, as powerful operator on this market.
As such, TDF was imposed cost accounting and accounting separation obligations on the entire relevant wholesale market, as well as several obligations on the market segment corresponding to wholesale digital terrestrial broadcasting offers.
- Why publish a competition indicator on these markets?
ARCEP is publishing today the first digital terrestrial broadcasting report in order to measure the change in the competitive situation on this wholesale market.
This publication meets two main objectives:
- to observe the development of competition on the upstream wholesale market and any impact of regulation
- to analyse the impact of regulation of the upstream wholesale market on the competitive situation of the downstream wholesale market of broadcasting offers made to multiplexes
This table provides the following for each deployment phase of digital terrestrial broadcasting:
- the percentage of sites alternative to those of the incumbent TDF chosen by multiplexes
- the market share of alternative broadcasters
So, during the first four phases of the deployment of terrestrial digital television, TDF’s competitors control 18% of the market in volume and manage 6% of the broadcasting sites chosen.
Linked documents
The report is available for consultation and downloading (pdf - 280KB)