Altice France has failed to reach an agreement with Free on the distribution fees for its TV channels BFM TV, RMC Decouverte and RMC Story, ahead of the deadline of 27 August set by a court decision earlier this month. Free had been accused by Altice France of illegally distributing the three channels and was ordered to remove them from its IPTV platform. The operator has now complied with the ruling, although Freebox TV customers can still access them on a free-to-air basis via the DTT tuner of set-top-box. The court decision had imposed a penalty of EUR 100,000 for each day that the channels stayed on Free's IPTV platform, starting from 27 August.
Free has since tried to reassure customers with a message via its TV boxes informing them that the channels should soon become available again. The operator had already been forced to stop distributing Altice's BFM Business TV, which unlike the other three channels is not available on a free-to-air basis over DTT. Freebox TV customers have also lost access to the replay services of all four channels since April.
Commenting on the dispute, Free's founder Xavier Niel confirmed to Les Echos the operator’s firm opposition to any agreement demanding remuneration for linear TV services available on a free-to-air basis over DTT. Meanwhile, Free remains open to discuss payment terms for value added on-demand features, such as replay services. The latter, however, are not particularly relevant for a news channel such as BFM TV. Niel said it has tried to propose new contract terms to Altice, offering to turn BFM TV into a paid-for channel for Freebox customers.
Earlier in August, broadcast authority CSA published its assessment of the dispute, stating that the Iliad subsidiary had a right to refuse distributing the three TV channels if it was unable to reach a favourable deal with Altice. According to press reports, the carriage fees demanded to Free amounted to EUR 4 million at the start of the contract renewal negotiations, but the amount under discussion is now significantly lower.
