PARIS, May 14 (Reuters) - France Telecom on Thursday won a court appeal in a dispute with Vivendi's SFR and Internet service provider Iliad's Free, allowing its Orange Sport pay-TV channel to be exclusive to its own broadband customers.
The commercialisation of Orange Sport, suspended on March 24 following a legal challenge by SFR and Free, will resume on the Internet from May 15 for triple-play subscribers and from May 16 in stores, France Telecom said.
SFR and Iliad said they had not yet decided whether they would appeal the ruling.
'We acknowledge this information. We are surprised at the discrepancy it creates on the market,' an SFR spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for Iliad said the ruling was 'not in the interests of consumers'.
'The game is just starting,' she added.
According to the Le Figaro.fr Web site, SFR and Iliad were fined 10,000 euros each and planned to appeal the ruling.
Thursday's appeal court decision was initially due on June 4, but was brought forward, a France Telecom spokeswoman said.
The Paris Commerce Court had ruled in February that Orange could not combine its Orange Sport offer with other services.
France Telecom Chief Executive Didier Lombard had said a negative court decision would threaten its triple-play offer in France after it had spent money on exclusive content.
France Telecom has been buying up sports rights, including for France's top football league last year.
Orange had 363,000 subscribers to its TV offers at the end of March, including 112,000 for Orange Sport.
Meanwhile, the French competition council is set to rule around mid-June on whether France Telecom's exclusivity on its Orange Sport et Orange Cinema products breaches fair competition rules.
(Reporting by Cyril Altmeyer and Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Marcel Michelson and Elaine Hardcastle) Keywords: FRANCETEL/ (dominique.vidalon.reuters.com; +33 1 49495432; Reuters Messaging:dominique.vidalon.reuters.com@reuters.net) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
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