Foxtel confirms plans to ditch cable and move customers over to satellite
Foxtel has confirmed plans to turn off its cable services and move subscribers to satellite connections, claiming the shift will provide a more reliable service for customers wanting high definition programs.
The move, first reported by Trevor Long on tech website ETFM, will see customers receiving Foxtel’s service through the NBN-owned hybrid fibre optic (HFC) cable network migrated over to the satellite service.
Foxtel claims the shift to satellite will provide and better and more reliable service to subscription TV viewers.
Bollocks! I had sat and it stopped working everytime we had a thunderstorm. Cable was far, far more stable.
Spot on Rifraf! Every time I see black clouds from my Surry Hills apartment I assume that the Foxtel will drop out for a few hours – and it does. Satellite pay television is as reliable as Soviet era electricity. One lightning bolt and it’s Bye Bye Wentworth.
So it goes down in a storm, but it returns, when the Internet goes down taking with it the Mobile network, it can be caused by a myriad of causes, it won’t come back for a long time, destroying nations and their infrastructure! Oh! How I’ll smile, watching people without a phone stuck in their face! Screaming in tear that they can’t access their personal accounts, maybe they might acknowledge that there are people around them again?i
…and I thought the only thing they were ditching were customers
Big mistake. Big. If you’re a cable customer in a metro area you get the full suite of FTA channels.
If you’re on satellite you get none of the FTA high def channels. And no Seven Two, no Seven Flix, no Nine Life and I know there are others missing too.
Will Foxtel start providing these, hmmm? I’ll bet not.
Actually you can get FTA HD on Sat, but it depends on the IQ3 box and/or your apartment building. In my setup, the sat pulls the FTA signal over the same coax cable and i’ve got a full range on channels 200+
I’ve also seen another IQ box with a FTA tuner and secondary aerial connection too.
That’s true of your place has an antenna on it. But lots of people rely on FTA through Foxtel for its convenience. Or they live in bad reception areas and can only reliably watch FTA via cable
[b]I’ve also seen another IQ box with a FTA tuner and secondary aerial connection too.[/b]
Utter rubbish. No such box exists….. Oh and i work for Foxtel. Foxtel is not obliged to broadcast FTA, they only do so mainly because Packer had an agreement due to share holding.
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/audio-visual/digital-tv-recorders/foxtel-iq3-1289018/review
here are two versions – one for cable customers and one for satellite customers. From a usability point, they are identical, although there are a few hardware differences. Namely, the satellite box incorporates a pair of terrestrial tuners, so you can watch free-to-air TV channels through the box.
That small difference aside, the models are otherwise identical. Inside, there are eight tuners for broadcast TV – although at launch you will only be able to record three programs and watch a fourth at any given time.
This won’t bode well for customers with TVs larger than 55in / 4k res. Have they released technical details? – i.e will they be utilising to HEVC/H265 compression? New IQ units (again)?
Having shifted from Cable to Satellite the compression and bitrate for Sat content is horrendous in comparison. SD channels look like YouTube videos and HD looks like a poor cousin to Netflix / Stan streaming & iTune rentals.
If Foxtel says they’re a technology company, they need to start being more transparent around it.
Whatever Foxtel is it’s not a technology company. The technology is seen as an inconvenience in delivering the content.
And, if you’re an apartment owner, the Body Corporate will be required to determine whether the building will switch to Sat. I suspect once they see the costs associated with installing a TDT for distributing the Satellite signal to each apartment and the potential rewiring costs, it will be a no.
Foxfail strikes again
Big big mistake.
They will lose many customers because of this!
Here we go again…
I have Netflix and Foxtel
Netflix no adds great picture with my 70 inch 4k tv and cheap subscription
Foxtel more adds than commercial tv
higy cost subscription crap picture quality
So looks like I will get rid of foxtel
Bill
The funniest of all is the football advert talking about ads. It truly sums up most content on Foxtel. Wall to wall adverts. Foxtel cares only about money, individual customers are not really important. What they forget is that there is becoming less and less difference between themselves and free to air stations. Streaming services are superior and cheaper.
Who cares about free to air or fox and how they are delivered. They have made themselves irrelevant!
Murdoch
Good on ya Bill.
Maybe put all the money you save towards typing or spelling lessons.
Foxtel should also consider implementing IPTV for its traditional pay-TV service like a lot of European telcos and BT are doing. As well, it should offer this service in an infrastructure-neutral way so as to provide via NBN or any of the independent next-generation networks that are popping up around Australia, along with the ability to provide retail ISPs with a pay-TV service to package as part of their multiple-play service deals.
As for free-to-air TV service, Freeview should also look towards a “technology-neutral” approach for delivering these services so that it could be delivered by NBN and other IP-based infrastructure networks on a “must-carry” basis, satellite or the traditional aerial.
Seems that’s the approach – announced today in Foxtel town hall that satellite progressively decommissioned over next 5-7 years. full streaming service on the cards only. So double migration ahead for users.
I’ve had foxtel for years – in previous places via cable and for the last 9 years in my current apartment via satellite as our inner west street didn’t have cabling (still none). We got satellite installed for free by Foxtel when they were running a ‘your street doesn’t have cable, let us give you a free satellite install and access’ thing going. I’ve always been happy with the reception as I often see other friends in the inner west having constant phone connection dropouts, and never have that problem.
The only thing that sucks with satellite is not having access through my tv to all the on-demand content, which they are increasingly offering instead of channels they keep shutting down (World Movies and TCM).
Everytime it rains heavily or thunderstoms I lose my Foxtel as I’m on satellite – this doesn’t happen to cable clients…what a load of rubbish.
Happy Friday negative nancies, hollow whispers on a public forum.
Might be worth focusing on your own companies
Just signed up to them on cable for the year, if they try to get me on sat im GONE
Satellite on roof, fed to one of these = no extra cabling needed for single cable outlets
https://www.kingray.net.au/19288.aspx
Is there any reason why Foxtel couldn’t feed everything through the NBN for those that have it instead of pushing everyone onto Satellite?
it should be that easy but it isn’t! nbn pricing structure makes it near impossible to push all the content of Foxtel and not blow out the ISP costs which are based on bandwidth consumption from users despite what current ISP’s charge unlimited. Satellite provides 1Gbps download speeds which is why it’s useful with no limits.
We live in a wireless world. I want to stream without boxes and cables everywhere but alas not with Foxtel. They are doing this because they make more money from boxes (hardware + installation) than streaming services.
True story from a month ago:
I rang Foxtel to get my mother’s ancient STB upgraded to iQ3.
Customer service guy (in a VERY noisy room) checked her account for a few minutes and came back to say the new box had to be a satellite setup as ‘iQ3 boxes just aren’t made for cable anymore’.
Expecting the worst, I asked how much that would be for a multiroom system.
‘First iQ3 box is free with free install.’
If I want to keep the old box in the other room?
‘We’ll hook that up at the same time, no charge.’
They were out within 10 days, and took slightly over the 2 hours estimated to install. I could hardly believe it myself, but it happened and it was all free. Sorry to interrupt the complaints hotline, but sometimes they get it right!
Oh yeah now is the time to ring for deals … just before the float ! They are desperate for sub numbers so say you will disconnect and name your price !
Interesting to read your post! We also rang to have our iq2 box upgraded to an iq3. We are on cable and there was no mention of having to change to sat-elite. Appointment was made for tech to come out and do the change over (no cost!). The day before it was cancelled. New appointment made and 1 hour before tech was due he rang to say he had no iq’s to install. Also that our old box could not be used in another room – it would have to go back with him and we needed to delete all recorded programs which we did. Further calls resulted in that apparently Fox is going over to salelite and that is the reason for no further installations of iq’s for cable customers – what supply they do have is reserved for satellite customers only!! For us at the moment we will most likely give Foxtel the flick!! and enjoy Netflicks & or Stan as another option.
So what happens to Foxtel Now services?
So true,rain,heavy storms and it no signal cable is the best if they go say I will no let her want it
Well those who ring to complain about Foxtel wont be privileged to be speaking with a call centre staff based in Qld or Melbourne after another 125 staff have been made redundant just before Easter. Sadly Robina call centre in QLD is set to close, then followed by Mooneeponds.
Which call centre is that?. I always get the Phillipines
I have been a fox platinum subscriber for 15 years. It’s is just a rip off with so much other competition. I will get ride of it when I am forced to go satillite. Bye bye Foxtel
Never had pay TV, never will. All problems solved!
They are turning off cable to save money . It’s all smoke and mirrors about satellite being better quality , more reliable etc .
The cable service costs them a lot of money & FOXTEL has been trying to cease the deal for years !
Thanks for this. I certainly got the impression I was being railroaded but if they are going to cut out cable then I guess there is no choice
Foxtel signal outage (via Telstra cable) in Sydney Hills District today 7June 2018. Phoned Telstra who rerouted me to overseas call centre where I had to repeat relevant details several times to the staff member. All he was interested in was changing us from iQ2 box to an iQ3 box and satellite dish rather than cable; he claimed it would be free of charge. I consider satellite reception would be subject to variant weather conditions – especially thunderstorms – so told him that if we had to move to satellite we would cancel Foxtel subscription. My call was transferred by Telstra to Foxtel and they raised a ticket to list the outage. Later check of Telstra site shows major outage in area. No update yet from Telstra or Foxtel. One has to wonder whether Foxtel line outages are to encourage subscribers to surrender to satellite.
Yes I have been wondering that as well. In my area (east side of Brisbane) I have been getting outages during the weekends. Its only started in the last 12 months. I phoned and complained and wanted to have my daily fee credited to my account. That wasnt a proble. Then I was offered an upgrade to IQ4 and be moved onto satellite. I so far ahvent taken up that option. My son visted me during June. He is an IT tech for a large international company. I told him about the satellite move and he was surprised as for him its a backwards move. Now on top of this we have the NBN knocking on the door and that appears to bring with it, its own issues. Soon I will have a house full of boxed and leads and they wont be where I want them. So getting a little concerned about all this stuff.
Let’s be honest, they are switching to satellite to avoid having to pay NBN Co for access to their HFC network. If satellite was truly a better technology, why didn’t they just go to satellite in the first place before spending hundreds of millions of dollars rolling out an entirely new HFC network around the country?
They are managing their decline by controlling the cost base more and more. They can see the writing on the wall.
Don’t want to get political so won’t mention any names but the two chaps who dreamt up this NBN – ‘Nationalized’ Broadband
Network – on the back of a napkin are to blame for this. HFC/Cable infrastructure is now too expensive and bureaucratically cumbersome for Foxtel to bother with. So Foxtel’s basically implementing it’s own satellite infrastructure in leiu. In a generation or so when the population is >90% computer literate all will ultimately be migrated to a streaming only service like foxtel now. It’s a no brainer.
I’m a Telstra NBN/HFC user and Foxtel just today tried to jostle me into an IQ3 satellite service upgrade from my IQ2 cable. Rang them to send out a new IQ2 box as my second IQ2 box is continually freezing up on me. Basically an IQ2 replacement is not an option. The only option being an, albeit free, iq3/satellite upgrade.
In search of solutions I stumbled across Foxtel Now; a viable enough option with its Apple AirPlay functionality. So I’ll be ditching my 2 iq2 boxes to take up Foxtel Now with just the drama package. I was originally paying extra for HD too so will easily pocket $100 per month now in savings.
To be fair though I’m giving my current veiwing selection a massive haircut. Still Netflix/Stan/Amazon and Freeview are mitigating the pain greatly.
[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]
I’m sorry I updated my box. It went crazy the other night, wouldn’t tape or it taped the wrong show. Rang foxtel but as usual no live person answered, just a dumb recording. Not happy at all. Poor customer service after having box installed. Think I’ll cancel automatic payment and see how long it takes for them to get in contact with me then! A very very very dissatisfied user.
I’m so sick of the rubbish movies & repeated every day, what a sham Foxtel is!!
Its getting worse,im a customer since 97′,and the decline in tech support and channels is annoying. Never ending adds,and increases in monthly payments is putting foxtel on the decline…very close to disconnecting the service, and as a satellite subscriber, there are way more drop outs than cable.
When will this happen in West Ryde NSW?
I have had a cable service for about 25 years but will no longer be able to continue when Foxtel drop cable early in 2020.
My units body corporate will not allow satellite dishes on site, so they lose me as a customer, so much for customer loyalty.
Drop a satisfactory service for an extremely UNRELIABLE one?
Well done Foxtel.
Reading all the above now makes me understand why after ringing up and asking for a IQ3 ,told it would be installed on Sat it turned out to be an IQ2 with no chance of what I asked for,It just proves how dumb I am,the perfect set up.
Same as Graham – after ringing up to review plan I was offered the “free upgrade to IQ4 boxes” … “will need a technician to do it ..” (should have rung alarm bells) .. Tech shows up – “so we’re putting in satellite today” … WTF ? no mention of that in the 40 min phone call earlier. No thanks – off you pop. Where’s the ombudsman number ?
Thanks for all the interesting comments fellow foxtel victims. Haven’t had a cable signal for 6 days now because of Telstra preparing the way for nbn in our area and they’ve obviously stuffed something. Not confident that it will actually get fixed either. But after braving a telephone call with the recorded voices, complained via Facebook and at least got to chat via Messenger with someone (who obviously offered me satellite/iQ4) instead of having to listen to some call centre Philippina who talks too fast and has her mouth too close to the headset microphone. Also got a credit for non-service period. But still not sure whether to cancel sub or go with satellite (sigh)…decisions, decisions…