Sky And Vodafone Launch Sky Mobile TV

Sky And Vodafone Launch Sky Mobile TV

SKY Television and Vodafone today announced the launch of a new TV service, SKY Mobile TV. The new mobile service, for customers of Vodafone with 3G handsets, will revolutionise how people will be able to view television in New Zealand. The service will be available from early 2007 and will comprise a bundle of at least eight channels for a $2.50 per week subscription. As an introductory offer, early subscribers will receive the first three weeks free.

SKY Mobile TV will deliver a variety of entertainment and information channels, including an exclusive made-for-mobile news channel [Sky News] plus sport and documentary programmes. Some channels will be broadcast as live and others will be edited for mobile.

Channels include:

SKY Sport News

SKY News

SKY Movies

CNN

MTV

E!

Cartoon Network

Discovery

SKY will also broadcast live sports events including Rugby, International Cricket & European football. These will be available to Vodafone’s SKY Mobile TV subscribers on a pay per view basis

John Fellet, SKY Television CEO, says, "Our strategy is to offer content to customers anytime, anywhere so that they can watch what they want, when they want to. SKY Mobile TV enables people to keep up with the latest news, sport and entertainment wherever they are. Vodafone is an ideal partner to make this happen and we look forward to developing this relationship further.”

Russell Stanners, Vodafone CEO says, “We’re excited to be able to offer this service to our customers in partnership with SKY. Multi channel mobile TV is an important element of our content strategy. The mobile broadcast of live sport events is an area where mobile TV has taken off internationally and is one that we feel certain sports fans in New Zealand will embrace”.

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About SKY Television

SKY Television (SKY), broadcasting via both UHF and DTH is New Zealand’s pre-eminent Pay TV operator, offering a wide range of sports, movies, music, on-demand and general content across more than 80 channels. SKY’s channel line-up includes 6 sports channels, 5 movie channels, 7 general entertainment channels, 5 documentary channels, 5 news channels, 4 children’s channels, as well as other niche channels. (At 18 August 2006, SKY had 667,270 subscribers).

SKY launched as a three-channel UHF service in 1990, with two further channels added four years later. SKY’s UHF signal reaches more than 83% of the country’s 1.5 million households. In December 1998 it launched a digital satellite service, extending its reach to the whole country. SKY also offers pay-per-view movies, live events and interactive services including Skybet, the Weather Channel, and games channels Mind Games and Playin’ TV.

With the establishment of a new on line DVD rental service and in December 2005, the launch of MY SKY, a new set top box incorporating a personal video recorder, SKY is positioned to bring New Zealand viewers even more entertainment options.

On 8 February 2006, SKY completed the purchase of the New Zealand television business of Prime Television Ltd. The acquisition of a free-to-air channel gives SKY the opportunity to showcase its channels and programmes whilst ensuring that New Zealand consumers can view delayed free-to-air sports programmes such as rugby, rugby league and cricket in primetime.

For further information, please visit SKY’s web site at www.skytv.co.nz.

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