Broadcom is under scrutiny by the United States Federal Trade Commission due to the allegations by customers that they force exclusive deals.
Broadcom, an American manufacturer, developer, designer, and worldwide supplier of a range of infrastructure and semiconductor software products, is yet again under antitrust crosshair from the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) following complaints that it’s forcing exclusive deals with customers.
Report details
The FTC has started gathering details about Broadcom’s unlawfully forced exclusivity deals on customers.
The report further said, Broadcom – one of the major suppliers of Bluetooth chips and Wi-Fi to companies such as Apple, blames supply-chain crisis for justifying demands from consumers.
The FTC declined to make a comment, whereas Broadcom didn’t respond instantly to questions from reporters to comment on the situation.
In July of 2021, the FTC said they filed an order settling antitrust charges and allegations against the semiconductor manufacturing company. The ‘consent’ order required the company to stop insisting that its consumers purchase components only or mainly from Broadcom.
Broadcom’s stance
Broadcom said in its official statement that it was pleased to resolve the matter. “While we disagree that our actions violated the law and disagree with the FTC’s characterisations of our business, we look forward to putting this matter behind us,” it said.
In this situation, the FTC aims to determine whether Broadcom has violated the previous settlement that focused on ‘chips’ for routers and set cable boxes, which was finalised only in November last year.
In addition, the trade commission is also probing the semiconductor manufacturing giant’s sales practices regarding other products such as chips for wireless internet ‘access points’, enterprise routers, and Ethernet switches.
The FTC has gone through these products in their earlier investigation; however, they didn’t level any official charges against the company.
Furthermore, in October 2020, Broadcom had reached a very similar deal with European Commission.
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