Virgin Media slams Competition Commission over 'irrational' treatment of BSkyB In a submission to the Commision, published on Tuesday, Virgin Media, the telecoms business founded by Richard Branson, attacked the Commission's "irrational, unsound and highly speculative" analysis, which "failed to take into account relevant facts." "In place of empirical evidence and verifiable fact, the Commission relies heavily on speculation and assertion and, very often, fails to take into account relevant evidence," said the company, which competes head-on with BSkyB. The facts remain unchanged: Sky has dominated the pay TV market for some 20 years and, left unadressed by meaningful regulatory intervention, will continue to do so. Without regulatory intervention, pay-TV customers will suffer from "higher prices, lower quality of service, less choice and less innovation" it added. The Commission argued that the rising popularity of on-demand services will put a dent in BSkyB's ability to charge excessive prices for its film services, and that the pay-TV service 39pc owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, faces stiffer competition for movie rights than in the past. Netflix and LoveFilm have been steadily buying up the rights to the so-called second pay-TV window, allowing them to show the movies immediately after BSkyB's exclusive first run, but Sky Movies still holds the exclusive rights to show all the content from all six of Hollywood's major film studios before any other broadcaster. Like Virgin, Ofcom takes the view that tighter controls are required to stop BSkyB from inflating the price of its movie service. Giving evidence in March, the broadcasting regulator said there "appeared to be no change to the Commission's provisional findings [in August]" and that consumers would continue to be over-charged for movies unless it introduced "an effective remedy."