Telstra, on Friday, announced that they will be shutting down their Mobile Foxtel portal and related Android and iOS apps, in favour of pushing subscribers to streaming services Foxtel Go and Presto.
The move announced on the Telstra Crowd Support Forums thanks customers for using the Mobile Foxtel service but says that the service will close its doors, and apps will cease working on the 27th of July.
Depending on what you signed up for, Mobile Foxtel gave you the opportunity to watch up to 34 channels on the go. Until the closure, Telstra was offering Mobile Foxtel as an umetered service, so that any content watched did not impact your data allowance; this will not be true of all the alternative offerings.
Telstra advised they officially stopped signing up new subscribers for Mobile Foxtel last Thursday, the 23rd of June. Current subscribers will be able to use their subscription right up until the closure date, unless of course you cancel your subscription earlier. Telstra further says that you won’t be charged for Mobile Foxtel on your bill after the 23rd of June.
The official reason that Telstra is giving for closing Mobile Foxtel is:
We provide a range of entertainment products to suit our customers’ needs. We’ve seen a particularly strong appetite for on-demand style content, as people become more accustomed to watching what they want, when they want. And this is why we’ll be closing Mobile Foxtel.
As an alterntaive to Mobile Foxtel, Telstra is pushing new subscribers towards other Foxtel and Telstra services available on websites and apps, such as Foxtel Go and Presto – both services of which will use data from your monthly data cap.
Telstra is however offering Telstra’s NRL and AFL live pass service, the use of which is included for most Telstra mobile customers as part of their plan. The data used by the NRL and AFL live pass services are not counted towards your data cap if you use a Telstra service to watch them.
The Mobile Foxtel app will, as of the 27th of July, start displaying a closure notification when you open the app. Telstra is recommending you simply uninstall the app from your Android (or iOS) device at that stage.
Telstra is very likely shuttering an under utilised service with this move, it is however going to be seen as a move to grab more revenue from data hungry mobile video streamers. A gift of additional data to transition existing Mobile Foxtel users to the idea of a metered streaming service would have been welcomed, but it’s Telsra’s game and this is how they want to play it.
The unmetered Foxtel (albeit for an extra $8/month) was the main reason I went on contract with Telstra. Ughhh.
Forgot to mention that Mobile Foxtel offers Airplay, whereas GO, still to this day does not. Agreed that no doubt this is a cash grab, going from unmetered to metered.