Argentina. Despite extraordinary appeals filed by the government and the telephone companies, Argentina's Supreme Court of Justice banned the latter from offering television services, following an action brought by the Argentine Association of Cable Television, ATVC.
The telephone companies affected by this measure were Telecom and Telefónica, which intended to offer video on demand services and triple play packages, in partnership with DirecTV.
The process had begun in 2007 after learning of the intention of the national government to grant telephone operators licenses to broadcast TV. At that time the ATVC, supported by other companies in the sector, filed a lawsuit against the measure.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court of Justice dismissed the arguments presented by the operators, which claimed that this service was prohibited for them in the Broadcasting Law 22,285, enacted in 1980, but that it became obsolete with Law 26,522 of Audiovisual Communication Services, also known as "Media Law".
This ruling confirms the decision of Chamber III of the National Chamber of Appeals in Federal Administrative Litigation, which had ruled in the same direction.
