Mexico. In strict compliance with the orders of the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, SCJN, and following the criteria specified in this judicial resolution, the Plenary of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications, IFT, ruled that there are no elements to determine the existence of any economic agent with substantial power in the pay television market.
On February 7, 2018, the First Chamber of the SCJN issued a ruling ordering the IFT to annul the resolution that this regulatory body approved on February 24, 2017, in which it declared Grupo Televisa as an economic agent with substantial power in the pay television market in the national territory.
As will be recalled, this resolution was issued by the Institute to comply with a judgment issued on January 19, 2017 by the First Collegiate Court in Administrative Matters specialized in Economic Competition, Broadcasting and Telecommunications, which granted an amparo to Televisora del Valle de México (Channel 40). In this judgment, the Court ordered the IFT to annul a first decision on substantial power in the pay-TV market, approved on September 30, 2015, and to issue a new one in which it limited its analysis to the period between January 2009 and August 2014.
After the IFT Plenary approved this new resolution on February 24, 2017, Grupo Televisa challenged it and, in response, on February 7 of this year, the First Chamber of the SCJN resolved that the decision issued by the Plenary did not meet the criteria established by the judgment of the First Collegiate Court in Administrative Matters specialized in Economic Competition, Broadcasting and Telecommunications, because it modified conclusions of the resolution issued in 2015 that did not result from the ordered temporal adjustment.
Consequently, the IFT issued a new resolution in the terms ordered by the judgment of the First Chamber of the SCJN, consisting of focusing the analysis on the period from January 2009 to August 2014, without adding data or considerations referring to a later period, and maintaining the conclusions of the resolution of September 2015.
