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New Zealand's broadband television end game in sight

Here in New Zealand, television stories dominate the week's telecommunications news.

Sky and Vodafone bow to the inevitable and call off their merger. Meanwhile TVNZ goes all in on streaming video.

For more than 40 years journalists have written about convergence. The telecommunication triple play idea: combining voice, data and television, is well over 20 years-old. I first heard about it in around 1990. That's right, it pre-dates the commercial internet1.

Almost overnight, we're on the other side of the revolution. Some bewildered people are looking back and wondering what happening. The rest of us wonder why it took so long to get here.

You say you want a revolution


The revolution is not that hard to understand, television uses electrical signals. They used to be analogue. Digital is better. Once TV was digital, it was only a matter of time before it became another stream of bits travelling through networks.

It took longer for the industry to grasp what that means in practice. Today we have Netflix and a cluster of junior would-be netflixen. We have binge viewing. We have on-demand viewing. Yacht races from across the world beam on to our mobile phones as we commute to work.

What we still don't have is the choice and flexibility we get from other online media. That's coming.

History lessons


If you look at the sweep of online history, a merger between Vodafone and Sky TV makes perfect sense. It made sense to the management and board of both companies. If you look at the deal with the eyes of a competition regulator, nixing the deal makes sense. It could have established a monster.
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There is something odd about the Commerce Commission's decision on the Vodafone-Sky merger. Yes, a merger would give one telco access to the crown jewels of sports programming. Yes, it could be exclusive access.

But Sky still has a monopoly on that material. A stand-alone Sky can cut an exclusive deal with a broadband company. Indeed, it's quite possible that it will strike an exclusive deal with Vodafone. Today's agreements and contracts between the two companies point in that direction.

Exclusive anyway?


So the Commerce Commission vetoed a merger because of something that will happen anyway. Am I alone thinking that is odd?

Whatever the logic, Sky and Vodafone have come to terms with the decision. The two issued a terse statement to the New Zealand Stock Exchange on Monday. It gave no reasons. But said they withdrew their High Court appeal protesting the Commerce Commission's decision.

The marriage may be off, but the two companies remain good friends. The relationship is still on.

Free Sky Sport for Vodafone customers


In June Vodafone said it would give 12 months' free Sky Sport to customers buying broadband and a basic Sky TV service. This is, more or less, the kind of arrangement the Commerce Commission worried about.

Elsewhere, Vodafone mobile customers can get a deal which includes free Sky Neon. And Sky is providing Vodafone with exclusive live coverage of All Blacks matches.

There's a secondary commercial logic here, the phone company is now the team's sponsor. Yet both deals have a whiff of the exclusivity that the Commerce Commission feared. Remember, in February the Commerce Commission said a proposed $3.5 billion merger would reduce competition.

Separate, but vertically-integrated


It said Sky and Vodafone had an opportunity to create a vertically-integrated business. That would give a single telco access to all popular sports broadcasting rights. There was a fear the market power wielded by the new business would lock out other potential bidders.

Now rivals fear the two non-merged companies are doing the same thing anyway. They are building a form of vertical integration without all the parts being in a single company.

The tragedy here is that, unlike Australia's ACCC, our regulator can't impose rules. That way it could OK the merger and insist the new company licence Sky content to all-comers.

There's a ridiculous lack of broadcasting oversight in New Zealand. The Commerce Commission's job is to ensure competition. We have intense telecommunication competition, but one company holds a TV sport monopoly.

TVNZ goes all-in on digital


From Monday, Television New Zealand will livestream channels One and Two. Viewers will be able to see all broadcast material over the internet on PCs, tablets and phones. Everything will be available online in HD 720p format. There will also be a new catch-up on-demand service.

Some material will be in box-set format for binge viewers. Programmes will be on Chromecast from next month and Apple TV later this year.

TVNZ plans to optimise its streaming service for mobile devices. It will also keep programmes available online for longer.

For now, there are no plans to do anything about television transmission. Although TVNZ says that could change depending on demand.

The ghost of Netflix


All these moves acknowledge the changing way people use television. The spectre of Netflix is somewhere there in the background.

The key problem for TVNZ is that it earns its revenue from advertising. This is more annoying and intrusive online than on broadcast TV.

If TVNZ wants to address Netflix head on, it might think about offering an ad-free paid option. Of course, it would need to have enough high quality material to make that viable. It could start by investing more in its news and current affairs programming.



  1. People started talking about the idea in the 1990s. I first heard the term around the time Kiwi Cable was building an HFC network on the Kapti Coast. The first serious attempts at triple play didn't come until later.



New Zealand's broadband television end game in sight was first posted at billbennett.co.nz. Some parts of this story were published in The Download Newsround.

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