Sky Television and Television New Zealand are launching a new digital pay
television service, to start next year.

Customers will get paid-for content, as well as free-to-air channels, using
a digital decoder. The decoder will also be able to use
Ultra-Fast-Broadband (UFB) in the future.

The new service will be launched in the first half of next year, to take
advantage of the digital switchover when a large number of homes will need
to change to a digital television service.

The new service will deliver pay channels over SKY's digital terrestrial
spectrum. SKY has a 51 per cent shareholding and TVNZ a 49 per cent
shareholding in the joint venture.

The joint venture will announce further details, including content and
pricing, in the near future.

However, the service is likely to offer some of the existing Sky channels
and all freeview channels.

Sky TV's existing service includes a wide range of sports, movies, music,
on-demand and general entertainment content across more than 112 channels.
As of August 2011, Sky had 836,622 subscribers.