Hot on the heels of Fetch TV's IPTV deal struck with Optus on Monday, Internode today became the third ISP among the top five fixed line broadband providers to offer an internet-delivered pay TV and movie download service to TV sets.
The latest deals – at least another two are in the wings for Fetch – signals the rapid deployment of IP-delivered TV content by ISP’s to take on pay and free-to-air broadcasters and Telstra in the lead-up to the rollout of the NBN.
Fetch TV includes free-to-air broadcasters in its offer. Fetch TV estimates about 62% of metro broadband homes are with providers other than Telstra, which itself struck a $100 million online rights deal with the AFL last week as part of its ploy to use content to win new broadband subscribers.
Internode, the fifth largest player in fixed line broadband services behind Telstra, iiNet, Optus and TPG, has about 200,000 customers. ISP’s offer the Fetch TV service for $20-$30 per month with Fetch recently adding MTV, National Geographic, Setanta Sports and Fox Sports News to its line-up. It already has movie rights deals with every major Hollywood studio.
Internode managing director Simon Hackett said Fetch TV and other emerging operators would halt the dominance of Foxtel and Austar in subscription TV.
“We expect to sell several thousand [Fetch TV] devices in the coming year,” he told AdNews. “It’s a journey that will take several years to fully explore and understand. The Australian pay TV industry, like the telecommunications industry in general, has been historically dominated by a few very large players. That historical vertical integration is finally starting to broaden out into a more genuinely diverse and competitive marketplace for pay TV and related services. The NBN will be a massive boost to the presence and take-up of IPTV services. The Fetch TV service is a leading edge example of the breed that is extremely effective as a convergence of all of the various things that IPTV means, into one physical box that drives the results into your TV set.”
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