Free-to-air (FTA) TV will stop airing on some Opticomm fibre connections throughout Australia, forcing those impacted to make alternative arrangements.<\/p>\n
In a letter received by customers<\/a> all across the country, Opticomm states that the FTA service provided via its technology \u201cwill be decommissioned in the future\u201d.<\/p>\n An alternative to the NBN, Opticomm is a privately-owned supplier of fibre infrastructure to hundreds of thousands of Australian residents and businesses. In addition to supplying high-speed internet, its Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology has also provided FTA access, removing the need for a TV antenna or separate aerial.<\/p>\n According to a support page on Opticomm\u2019s website<\/a>, the \u201cFTA service over the FTTP network will no longer be supported after 1 October 2025 in affected communities\u201d. After that date, customers might still be able to connect until 1 February 2026, which is when Opticomm plans to fully shut down the TV service.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear what Opticomm means by \u201caffected communities\u201d. There\u2019s no section on its website that communicates who is and isn\u2019t affected by the FTA shutdown. Unofficial support pages, like the Opticomm Australia Customers group on Facebook<\/a>, are filled with comments from people in different states who have received letters from the wholesale provider.<\/p>\n Why is Opticomm shutting down FTA in some regions?<\/p>\n Opticomm\u2019s official wording is that removing the TV service from its fibre network will \u201cenable future-proofing of FTTP networks\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe traditional broadcast method of delivering FTA TV on FTTP networks (over the last 20 years) has become more challenging to support as equipment reaches end-of-life and future manufacture and supply is uncertain, driven by alternative methods of delivery including streaming over broadband networks,\u201d a statement on Opticomm\u2019s website said.<\/p>\n It claims that the move will help deploy multi-gigabit-speed \u201cnext-generation broadband services\u201d. Multi-gigabit speeds recently entered the mainstream following the recent NBN upgrade<\/a>, which was matched by Opticomm<\/a>.<\/p>\n As for the communities that will no longer have FTA access through their FTTP connections, two main options remain. One is to watch TV online via on-demand streaming apps like ABC iview, SBS On Demand, and 7plus.<\/p>\n Alternatively, affected customers could install a TV antenna at their own cost. However, this may not be possible for renters or people living in strata title properties.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the latest in a series of blows to TV access in Australia, with some streaming services not available in remote areas<\/a>, and regional TV access at the whims of commercial agreements<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re affected, send us an email and let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free-to-air (FTA) TV will stop airing on some Opticomm fibre connections throughout Australia, forcing those impacted to make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-152621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}