For years I have been mulling over the issues associated with nationalised companies being sold off and going into public hands but with none of the publicly generated income being removed. Likewise organisations that use a dominant position, read monopoly, to dive into other areas and stifle competition.
Two big names spring to mind BT and SKY
BT for years has been living on the fact that it has historical, and not inconsequential, revenues from me and you, either directly or indirectly. The line rental etc you pay goes directly to BT and they use it for......not sure what for really because nobody tells us - just that they have it because they do. Nice business if you can get it. It’s not particularly this I have a major issue with, although being Yorkshire born and bred, I can see that it is not exactly value for money for the consumer. It’s when a huge organisation, such as BT, then uses this to compete in markets it was never supposed to enter, and even worse, using my money to compete against......me!! Has nobody recognised this yet?
BT is competing in a number of different areas against small businesses and individuals who directly fund them to do so because of the monopoly position they have. Take BT Vision, is this not publicly funded broadcasting but in disguise? Do we not pay the BBC through our license fees to provide us with a national broadcast network? Is it fair that BT, funded by me and you, uses this to then compete against the BBC et al. Not that I have a great deal of sympathy with BBC as freefall blunders appear to be the name of the game at the moment, but to allow an essentially publicly funded company such as BT to do this seems ludicrous. From BT Vision to DABS to a whole host of other markets, there are organisations that use their dominant position to compete in otherwise ‘open’ markets. My point is, if BT want or need to do this then I suggest they remove the comfort blanket of the ‘line rental’ revenue and go fly free in the open markets as everyone else has to. Personally I think using our money to build infrastructure is fine but to then use that infrastructure as a way of competing in other areas such as Vision, and only allowing consumers who have BT ‘lines’ to use it is wrong!!
Then we have SKY who took on a part funded company BSKYB and turned it into a monopoly for Satellite TV. They have been allowed to buy their market through sports coverage and now is offering broadband and telephony if you subscribe etc. Ok, again no problem with healthy competition but I do think that allowing organisations as big as NewsCorp to continually diversify, we run the risk of there only ever being 2 or 3 big companies and the rest of us should just pack up and go home. I really believe that someone, somewhere, should look at where all this is going and protect the public from being manipulated and monopolised in the media the way they are. There are small organisations throughout the UK trying to survive against a wave of corporate expansion and diversification that makes it increasingly difficult to do anything and does nothing to promote creativity and innovation. To top all this off the regulator has allowed SKY to buy part of ITV!!! Granted there are some big tracks being left as the decision is reversed but it should never have been allowed in the first place.
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