The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its judgement on petitions filed by Star, Sony and ESPN, which hold rights for content broadcast of major satellite channels, challenging a Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission interim order directing them to provide uninterrupted signals to Siti Cable till September 10.
A Bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde and Justice B P Singh reserved order on the petitions, which said the MRTPC order infringed their right to control their signals as Siti has changed over from terrestrial to headends-in-the-sky based transmission.
The MRTPC order was passed last week on an application by Siti, which expressed apprehension that these major channels after forming a cartel were planning to ease out Siti from cable operation business by denying it the contents of the most popular channels.
Appearing for Star, senior advocate P Chidambaram said that through HITS based transmission, Siti wanted to wipe out the control of the content provider over the subscriber base.
He said Siti cable, which did not even have an agreement with Star for transmission through HITS, was behaving as if it was the owner of the signals.
Appearing for Siti, senior advocate Kapil Sibal contended that Star proposing to be a broadcaster in India is promoting its company Hathaway in cable operation and wanted to create a monopolistic situation by denying Siti the signals of major channels.