With the impending arrival of Netflix in New Zealand, Orcon is offering new customers who sign up to any Orcon Unlimited plan on a 12 month contract from April 1 a credit equal to six months free Netflix.

The offer comes as Orcon announces the results of a survey of over 1500* Orcon UFB customers which shows that streaming is prolific amongst fibre users with 35 percent preferring online streaming as their primary means of watching television, twice as much as downloading (17%).

Orcon general manager Mike Shirley says, “This shows a change in the way customers are accessing content, with streaming and downloading combined overtaking traditional TV (48%) as the most common way to access TV and movies.”

“Customers are using a variety of devices to stream their favourite TV shows and movies and our research tells us that 71 percent of those with a streaming device are now watching less broadcast TV than they did prior to getting UFB,” adds Mr Shirley.

The Orcon research also named Netflix as the most popular streaming service with 88 percent of customers surveyed stating they would consider signing up to Netflix in the next 12 months. “Although, with the growing number of streaming services now available to New Zealanders, we wanted to create a streaming content credit that enabled our customers to choose their preferred streaming service, be it Netflix, Hulu, Lightbox, or any other,” stated Mr Shirley

In terms of the streaming benefits, surveyed customers were most in favour of ‘No advertising’ (60.5%), and ‘Not reliant on TV schedules’ (72.6%).

The six-months free offer follows the recent announcement that Orcon is upgrading its Global Mode Service so users will be able to switch between regions and watch content from different Netflix catalogues in the US and UK with ease.

“With more of our fibre customers favouring streaming as their main method of watching TV shows and movies, we want to give them access to even more online content and the Global Mode region-switcher will make it even easier for Netflix users to switch to different regions to view the content they want.“

The Global Mode region switching feature will launch in March free-of-charge to Orcon customers.