iiNet on the brink of IPTV launch

Renai LeMay
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 08:23

Your IT - Home IT

iiNet has already started trialling its planned internet television services (IPTV) in the homes of a group of its own staff, as it advances plans to get the first customers onto the new service in March.

The company’s long-running plans to launch IPTV in Australia will put it head to head with a number of other companies which already offer similar services — not only ISPs like TPG, but also the cable networks of companies like Optus and FOXTEL.

iiNet chief executive Michael Malone (pictured) said when he said “March”, he was thinking March 1st, but he laughed that his chief technology officer Greg Bader was “definitely thinking 5pm on March 31st”. “So I think it’ll end up being right towards the end of the month with the first customers being online,” he said yesterday in an interview.

In the quarter after that, the executive wants to start marketing the service to customers — however it won’t be a big television advertising blitz just yet. “You can expect to see us trying to harvest people from [broadband forum] Whirlpool,” he said.

The reason for the caution, Malone says, is that unlike the company’s last big technology drive with its integrated BoB router and telephone device, IPTV is a bit new.

“BoB … was fundamentally taking a lot of existing elements that were already pretty well tested in the Australian marketplace, and bringing them together in a single unit,” he said. “With IPTV, it’s testing a lot of stuff that’s fresh to the Australian market, hasn’t been done before.” iiNet doesn’t yet know what the exact input will be on its network when the service launches.