If you’re a customer of Adam, iiNet, Internode, Primus or Westnet (among others), then you can watch as much of the ABC’s excellent iView catchup service as you like without it counting towards your monthly download limits. Telstra (Australia’s largest ISP) has long been notable for its absence from that list, but it looks like the company might finally be about to join the club, at least in part.
Andrew Colley at Australian IT reports that Telstra and the ABC are negotiating to include iView on its forthcoming T-Box PVR. That in itself wouldn’t guarantee that iView was more broadly available, but it would at least represent a first step in creating a partnership. I suspect a large number of Lifehacker readers are already using one of the more iView-friendly ISPs, but it might well be a different story when it comes to their parents.
While there are technical issues involved in ensuring iView is unmetered, the main reason Telstra has resisted to date has been its desire to push consumers towards its own entertainment offerings such as the BigPond music and movies services. Hopefully the desire to make the T-Box comprehensive will get it to do the right thing for once.
Telstra, ABC in talks on iView access [Australian IT]
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