Dazn service disruptions, Agcom ready for “urgent measures”

On the issue of poor service on Dazn during the broadcast of the matches of the first day of the Serie A championship, theAGCOM “announced that it reserves the right to intervene with specific measures, including urgent ones, if necessary”.

In the meantime, the constant monitoring action continues, while a meeting with the company is planned after the second day of championship and that the issues of the quality of the service offered to subscribers will be the subject of constant attention.

Dazn has been awarded the broadcast rights for the new season of A league of football. The debut was not the best, however, confirming, at least in part, the fears about possible disruptions resulting from traffic peaks on the network. A few minutes before the kick-off of the first match, on Saturday 21 August, numerous users reported no signal, Blackout and lowering the definition, flooding social media with protest messages.

Similar disruptions have also occurred in the transmission of other meetings. Yesterday's meeting of Agcom Council on the case. Last June 24, the authority had issued a directive calling on all operators to avoid overloading the network during the broadcast of football matches.

The directive indicated two purposes: 1) to avoid network congestion phenomena, resulting from traffic peaks, which could occur in conjunction with the simultaneous broadcast of one or more football events; 2) to prevent disruptions for subscribers and to counteract the degradation of the quality of Internet access service for all users.

Yesterday Agcom clarified that “following that directive, Dazn has created a series of infrastructures that to date have contributed to avoiding network congestion. With this, moreover, the platform has accepted the direction and supervision of the Authority”.

But Agcom, in fact, reserves the right to intervene, even urgently. It should be remembered that at the end of July the Antitrust had given its green light to Tim's agreement with Dazn, establishing that Serie A would be broadcast without hitches on Dazn and Timvision.