Carlos Slim Skirts a Ban on TV Broadcasts

The world’s richest man just can’t take no for an answer. Banned by regulators from offering television service in his native country, Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom billionaire, has started streaming shows, news, sports, and cultural programming for free on the Web.

Rivals are not taking it lightly. Mexico’s No. 2 broadcaster, TV Azteca, has sued Slim’s phone carriers—América Móvil and Teléfonos de México —for Web broadcasts such as last month’s airing of the Pan American Games. Telmex was a sponsor of the Games and had online rights for Mexico, while TV Azteca owned a portion of the TV broadcast rights. Luis Niño, a spokesman for TV Azteca and other companies controlled by billionaire Ricardo Salinas, compared it with taking away business from Slim’s Mixup Music Store chain, which sells CDs and DVDs. “It’s as if I went right outside a store and started selling pirated music and movies, and told them, ‘It’s O.K. I downloaded them from the Internet,’ ” he says. Emilio Azcárraga, chief executive officer of market leader Grupo Televisa, has called on Mexican regulators to scrutinize Slim’s moves.