As a country known for its high level of piracy, Australians are excitedly embracing Netflix after years of monopoly by Foxtel (owned 50% by our national Telecom provider Telstra, and 50% by News Corp).
The impact this is having on Australia is huge - it's all you hear about in the news at the moment, but moreso it's having a social impact. Not only have Foxtel slashed their basic package price by 50% to compete (still more than twice as expensive as base package Netflix), but it's also threatening the established business models of our free-to-air channels, who rely on a captive audience to feed into their reality TV machines, and who use our lack of choice to delay broadcast of hit shows (hence the piracy).
Take up of Netflix seems pretty high and we've also seen several other Streaming Video on Demand services arise at the same time as Netflix. Things are getting very interesting over here.
Brutal Teardowns