Advanced Television

Telecom NZ, Sky TV in broadband partnership talks

November 5, 2010

At its September results briefing, Telecom Retail chief executive Alan Gourdie said his company was talking to Sky TV in New Zealand about becoming a possible iSky partner.

Sky TV’s new iSky service, launching by Christmas, will provide TV programmes and movies on-demand, delivered to a MySky HDi box via broadband.

A raft of ISP partners were recently announced for iSky – but Telecom, whose retail division holds around 57 per cent share in the home broadband market – was conspicuously absent. At the time, it was assumed that Telecom was protecting its relationship with TiVo, which offers a similar content over-broadband service, Caspa.

Gourdie said that if Telecom does reach an arrangement with Sky TV, it will continue with TiVo (whose parent company, Hybrid TV, is one third owned by TVNZ).

The iSky partners already announced are Vodafone, Slingshot (the retail arm of CallPlus), Orcon, Xnet, Woosh and Farmside.

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