Media regulator OfCom has announced it will launch an investigation into the previously reported dispute between Sky and Virgin Media, which led to Sky pulling its free to air channels off the Virgin cable network. The regulator is responding to a submission made to them by BT, Setanta, Top Up TV and Virgin Media themselves which asks for the Competition Commission to review the current ownership of the UK's digital/pay TV sector. Given who made the submission, those advocating the review presumably hope Competition authorities will rule that market leader BSkyB is too dominant and is using its dominance to unfairly compete with its rivals.
The National Consumer Council, which had already said it might itself request OfCom to launch such an investigation, welcomed the move, saying: "Aspects of this market appear to be failing consumers and a thorough investigation is warranted".
Meanwhile Sky, the unstated enemy in this whole thing, implied that those who had requested the investigation had done so ultimately with commercial motives (ie not with consumers' interests at heart), while adding that it hoped any review would also look into "the physical and legal barriers and business practices that shield Virgin Media from true competition".
Elsewhere in regulator type news, the government's Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has said she will be looking into whether OfCom or premium phone line regulator Icstis needed more powers with regards the use of premium phone lines by TV shows. She revealed those plans while talking to the Times about all those recent scandals involving fuck ups in the way premium rate viewer interactive features were managed by various TV companies - and as Vodaphone admitted it lost 11500 text votes during the voting on last weekend's edition of ITV's Dancing On Ice.