Spain

[ES] CMT Approves New Resolutions Related to Audio-Visual Services

IRIS 2000-10:1/9

Alberto Pérez Gómez

Entidad publica empresarial RED.ES

On 28 September 2000, the Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones (Telecommunications Market Commission - CMT) adopted a Resolution stating that it will investigate the impact of the use of proprietary API's (Application Programming Interfaces) in the Digital Terrestrial TV market.

The API's perform in the digital TV decoders a similar function to that of the operating systems in the PC's. They translate interactive TV applications written in a high-level software programming language into a low-level language the decoder can understand. If a decoder has a proprietary API embedded, it will not be able to understand interactive TV applications broadcast by a digital TV platform that uses a different proprietary API.

In Spain, the main operator in the DTTV market, Quiero TV, has chosen a proprietary API, Open TV. One of its rivals, the broadcaster Sogecable, has complained that this choice may affect competition in the DTTV market, and could restrict the ability of customers to receive all digital TV and interactive TV services with a single decoder. Quiero TV has argued that when it started operating it had to chose a proprietary API because there were no open APIs at that time, and that it then accepted a compromise to start the migration to an open API (the Multimedia Home Platform - MHP - fostered by the Digital Video Broadcasting group) as soon as it is available. Nevertheless, the CMT has decided to open an inquiry in order to assess the impact of the choice of API made by Quiero TV on the digital TV market.