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Optus Television is the cable television division of Australian telecommunications company Optus. Its chief rival is Foxtel. History Its immediate predecessor was Optus Vision, a joint venture between its parent company, Optus, and the large local media companies Publishing and Broadcasting Limited and Seven Network. The Optus Vision joint venture was founded to handle residential cable television and local telephony, while its parent concentrated on corporate, long-distance, satellite and interstate communications. Optus Vision used a unique hybrid cable to connect homes to its network, and later added broadband cable internet access to its network. Unlike in most countries, Australian local governments did not create local cable monopolies. This meant that when cable TV became legal in the early 90s anyone with enough money could lay a cable network anywhere. Optus and Telstra were the two main telecomunications companies in Australia at the time, and both spent billions on hybrid coax and optic fibre networks in the major capital cities. Optus' network reached small parts of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, while Telstra's covered exactly the same territory plus more of those cities and tiny parts of Adelaide, Perth and the Gold Coast. While the Optus network had Optus Vision, the Telstra network had Foxtel, a 50/50 joint venture with News Corporation. These competed heavily in the metropolitan areas. Both groups affiliated with another pay TV company, Austar, in the lower-profit rural areas. Austar was effectively given a monopoly in its territory. Optus Vision had nearly total coverage of the country's popular sports tied up (through partially Seven Network owned Sportsvision and ESPN), a movie package equal to Foxtel, and exclusive rights to popular channels like Disney Channel and MTV Australia. Optus proved that content is not always king. If people cannot get access to your content, eventually your content will end up somewhere that they can. From 1995 to 1997, the Super League War waged between the two consortiums over lucrative rugby league rights. At the end of the war, Packer changed sides, becoming a 25% owner of Foxtel. Optus Vision was sold to Optus, and renamed "Optus Television". In 2002 Optus let go of some of its exclusive content contracts, replacing them with non-exclusive ones. MTV Australia, Disney Channel and ESPN all became available on Foxtel as soon as they were able. Satellite Broadcasting Optus, along with Austar had a joint venture in the use of Satellite broadcasting for the delivery of Subscription Television. Originally, Foxtel had not previously offered a Satellite service, until purchasing the satellite subscribers from Australis Media within their service area. Until 2004, Foxtel was a customer of the Austar/Optus joint venture. Optus utilised this joint venture to initially trial and subsequently offer a basic satellite service, named VIP. The service was very select with not many being able to access the service. The ability to offer the service came about due to Optus offering a large number of channels to East Coast Television (now apart of Austar). After Optus axed the VIP Service, it also sold its share in the joint venture to Austar. In 2004, the roles reversed and Austar became the customer to Foxtel for satellite delivery. Sport Programming Until 2002, Optus did not offer the Fox Sports sporting channels on their service as Foxtel and Austar did, instead offering channels from Sportsvision (later C7 Sport) and ESPN. During the Super League/ARL war, Optus' sports channels had the rights to the ARL competition and the Super League rights were held by Fox Sports. Seven bought Sportsvision, which became Optus and Austar exclusive C7 Sport and progressively lost sporting rights to Fox Sports. During that time Foxtel granted Optus an "NRL Channel", screening all of the NRL matches that had previously been shown exclusivly on the Foxtel platform. C7 Sport for some time had attempted to access the Foxtel platform for their service - however Foxtel were hesitant to accede to the request, with one exception being the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where C7 offered two extra channels dedicated to Olympics coverage. In 2000, Seven and C7 Sport lost the AFL rights to a Nine/Ten and Foxtel-based consortium leaving C7 with only the Olympics and 6 Nations Rugby rights of major substance. In 2002, the commencement of the new AFL broadcasting deal with Foxtel led Optus and Austar to drop C7 Sport from their services, leading to the demise of the channel. Optus replaced the C7 channels with an Optus rebadged version of Fox Sports. The dropping of the C7 service has lead to Optus being a party in the action being taken by the Seven Network over the demise of the C7 Sport service. Subscriber Numbers For some time, Optus has not explicitly released subscriber numbers for their Optus Television service, however combining them with other services offered under the division that Optus Television is apart of. Since December 2002, subscriber numbers have dropped considerably to almost half of the 241,000 reported. Since that time, Optus has repositioned its television service to being a major component of bundled services, rather than a service by itself. Optus iTV Trials During 2002-03, Optus trialed interactive digital television over part of its Sydney network. This was known as Optus iTV. The service was unique to Optus and had a good deal of positive consumer feedback. The iTV service utilised the Liberate platform instead of OpenTV, which Foxtel had made a commitment to use for their Digital Service. The trials were cancelled by Optus after reaching agreement with over the Content Supply Agreement. Optus TV featuring Foxtel After sigining up to the Content Supply Agreement with Foxtel, Optus Television changed their channel lineup to reflect the offerings from Foxtel. Optus were able to have a number of differences between their offering and the Foxtel offering, so that Optus could meet some contractual obligations they had, as well as satisfying a number of requirements placed on the organisation by the ACCC. A number of channels that had previously been unique to Optus (in comparison to Foxtel) were removed from Optus' lineup as they competed with channels that Foxtel offered, other channels crossed from Optus to the Foxtel lineup. Optus were required to have a number of channels that were unique to their service, though the flagged channels are now available on both platforms without any change in regulation nor penalty. Optus TV featuring Foxtel Digital In April 2005, Foxtel granted Optus the right to carry the "Foxtel Digital" platform - an expanded range of channels including some interactivity. The service would be resold by Optus, utilising the same equipment as Foxtel (such as the Foxtel iQ PDR, NDS technologies for encryption and OpenTV for interactivity delivery). This agreement also allows for non-exclusive resale rights to the Foxtel Digital service using Satellite Delivery within Foxtel's service area. Commencing trials in November 2005, the service became fully operational in December of the same year. Optus is believed to be permitting wholesale access to the network so third party broadcasters can sell subscription services over Optus cable. Channel line-up Channels on the "Optus TV featuring Foxtel Digital" service: Entertainment Movies Sports News, Weather Documentaries & Infotainment Kids Music Digital Audio Channel 830 - Stations featured on air Interactive Other Audio Stations + Dependent on the location of the subscriber. Foxtel Box Office - PPV Movies Other | |||||||
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