TPG enters the streaming wars, partnering with Foxtel Group’s Hubbl, as its steps up battle with Telstra

Australia’s third biggest telco is intensifying its battle with bigger rival Telstra, muscling into the content space via partnership with Foxtel Group’s new streaming platform Hubbl.

Hamish and Andy promote the new Hubbl device for entertainment in Sydney earlier this year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

TPG is intensifying its battle with bigger rival Telstra, muscling into the content space via partnership with Foxtel Group’s new TV and streaming aggregation platform Hubbl.

Australia’s third-largest telco has sat on the sidelines of the content wars, which have been widely viewed as a way to win share in the fiercely competitive telco market since the arrival of Netflix and other streaming services last decade.

Telstra and Optus have invested billions of dollars buying content, including sport broadcast rights, and partnering with streaming platforms such as Fetch or building their own services. In contrast, TPG has opted to focus more on being a so-called pure-play mobile operator, until now.

Hubbl will be available for customers on TPG’s flagship brand Vodafone. Its consumer executive Kieren Cooney said the deal was about creating more value – the same rationale that Telstra and Optus have adopted for years to keep customers sticky.

“By connecting our customers to a premium entertainment experience with Vodafone’s great value broadband, we are setting a new standard for what Australians can expect from their home entertainment set up,” Mr Cooney said.

The Hubbl puck and remote control.

TPG’s move into the content space comes as Telstra decommissions its “Telstra TV” – a rebranded streaming box from US tech player Roku – and its Telstra Boxoffice product, which allowed people to rent and buy movies.

Telstra has replaced the service with Fetch, in which it acquired a majority stake two years ago. Despite owning 35 per cent of Foxtel Group – with News Corp, owner of The Australian, holding the remaining 65 per cent – Telstra has invested about $50m in Fetch.

This includes the provisioning for onboarding Telstra TV customers onto the Fetch platform. Optus previously had a partnership with Fetch but that ended after Telstra secured a stake in the company.

At the time of the Fetch acquisition, Telstra’s executive in charge of technology, Kim Krogh Andersen, said while the current Telstra TV product remained popular, the underlying technology platform needed to “evolve to support a deeper level of engagement”.

“It also needs to support future entertainment options and be delivered via the hardware options customers want, including Smart TVs,” Mr Krogh Andersen said at the time.

“After a strategic review of our options, we have selected Fetch TV for its ability to deliver this functionality at scale for our customers, given Fetch’s software development capability, innovative road map and strong track record delivering capability for other Australian telco partners.”

Foxtel Group announced Hubbl at its Upfronts event in Sydney last October, taking on tech titans Apple and Amazon, which have become big players in the content and streaming space.

Hubbl was hailed as the next generation of streaming, giving consumers a single user interface to view different streaming apps, eliminating the need to jump in and out of apps to hunt for new content.
Hubbl executive director Dani Simpson said it aimed to create a “unique product that simplifies the TV and streaming experience”.

“We’re excited to partner with Vodafone to get customers Hubbl’n through this special deal,” she said

“With 16 paid and free apps available on Hubbl and more to come, there is nothing like the world of entertainment Hubbl unlocks.”