By Vida Kocjan
POP TV and Kanal A are again in a privileged position, and the new management of Telekom Slovenije is making decisions harmful to the company (and Slovenian taxpayers).
Telekom, POP TV, and Kanal A ended the dispute regarding programme distribution. After Telekom Slovenije withdrew the lawsuit against POP TV and Kanal A, these two media houses withdrew the counterclaim against Telekom and the court stopped the proceedings.
At the end of 2021, Telekom Slovenije filed a lawsuit against POP TV and Kanal A, which are part of the system of the media company Pro Plus, for the annulment of the contract on the inclusion of their programmes in the system of the largest telecommunications operator in the country. They demanded a refund of around 12.4 million euros.
In the lawsuit, Telekom stated that it has been paying an unfair and excessive price for POP TV, Kanal A, Brio, Oto, and Kino programmes for several years, which is the result of the fact that the companies, which together with Pro Plus represent a business unit, have been abusing their dominant position on the wholesale television programme market from mid-November 2017.
Telekom last paid 480,000 euros (excluding VAT) per month for the programmes (even more a year before that), and 38,000 euros per month before the conclusion of the contract in 2016. Since 2017, Telekom has been paying 12.6 times more to both POP TV and Kanal A.
Telekom also found that Pro plus treated the operators differently, so they proposed to the court to request the company to submit the contracts it has with Telemach, A1, and T-2.
The companies POP TV and Kanal A then filed a counterclaim against Telekom last May (after the elections) for the payment of compensation in the amount of 58.15 million euros. The claim is said to represent the damage allegedly suffered by the company due to an underpaid assessment for the distribution of TV programmes between February 2017 and the end of March 2022.
And now it ended as expected. Golob’s government changed management in Telekom, which withdrew the first lawsuit from 2021, then POP TV and Kanal A withdrew their lawsuit.
Without checking facts, evidence and to the detriment of citizens, as Telekom is state-owned.
