Sky Welcomes Govt Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative

Media Release
21 September 2009

Sky Welcomes Government Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative

SKY Television today confirmed its support for the Government’s $1.5 billion ultra-fast broadband initiative.

John Fellet, SKY Chief Executive says; “Our strategy is that SKY is a platform agnostic content aggregator. In the 1990’s analogue UHF was the best way, during the last ten years it was satellite, in the future, broadband will most likely be the best way to distribute both linear and pay-per-view content.”

“Although satellite remains the most cost effective way to deliver video to 100% of New Zealanders, the growth in broadband residential users increases the available market for people consuming video over their home Internet connection – this is an area in which SKY plans to become increasingly active”, says Mr Fellet

The announcement is an endorsement of the growing importance of broadband connectivity - something that has been on SKY's strategic roadmap for soe time - MY SKY HDi, SKY’s High Definition PVR, has an Ethernet port and is capable of being broadband connected – with 120,000 SKY PVR users, SKY is already developing services for this.

The growth of business to business fibre capacity will help drive efficiencies for SKY in moving video around the country, to and from content providers and outside broadcast units. It will also be a catalyst for creative development within New Zealand as more people will have access to online video services and be able to create and post video efficiently.

The growth in broadband connected homes also aligns favourably with SKY's plans to use the Internet for customer interactions across all areas of its business for example, customer service and advertising sales.

SKY applauds the initiative and looks forward to its speedy implementation.

ENDS

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