Pay TV in Australia: Compare Plans and Review the Best Deals

Around the world, pay TV has been a key part of regular TV viewing for over half a century. Here in Australia, however, we only had free-to-air TV to entertain us for nearly 40 years from the arrival of television in 1956. With no competition, the free-to-air networks enjoyed total dominance over entertainment and sports TV programming.

Until 1995, that is. Back then, three different companies unleashed pay TV services on a country that had never seen so many channels available at the same time, changing everything in the process. Today, nearly 30 percent of Australians subscribe to pay TV in its traditional form. It might be a low percentage by international standards, but still a significant part of the viewing audience.

The current landscape for pay TV in Australia is now far more diverse than it used to be. When it comes to traditional cable and satellite pay TV, Foxtel is the provider which has dominated the industry for many years, but today there are many more alternatives which either provide competition to, or supplement the services of, the pay TV giant.

What is Pay TV, anyway?

While it’s a bit of a catch-all term that is sometimes used to describe any form of TV service that isn’t purely free-to-air, in Australia the term “pay TV” has historically referred to the various cable and satellite TV services that have appeared since 1995. They provide access to a group of premium television channels – a novel concept to Australians when it first started, but one that’s completely normal these days. This means that streaming – while still being TV that you pay for – is not usually considered to be Pay TV, although of course Pay TV providers often offer streaming services.

Delivery of those channels can be through several forms – via a network of fibre and analogue cables laid out in capital cities (very similar to the Fibre to the Node networks rolled out for broadband), via the internet or, most commonly these days, as a transmission from a dedicated TV satellite to a dish on your home or building’s roof (yes, TV from space – what a time to be alive!)

You generally subscribe to pay TV by paying a monthly subscription fee. This gives you access to a core set of channels. With most services, such as Foxtel, you then add extra “packs” or groups of channels depending on your interests (sports, movies, lifestyle, and so on). In that regard, the system has more in common with the UK pay TV format that the US one. In the US, pay TV is largely delivered via cable and is very often tied to a home broadband service as a package. In Australia, that cable is being taken over entirely for broadband use as part of the NBN, with all cable users expected to move to satellite or broadband delivery over the next few years.

Compare Plans

Plan

Inclusions

Price

Basic

• New customers: 14 day free trial
• Basic
• No Lock-in Contract
• Watch on 2 devices concurrently
• Watch Live NRL, AFL, Super Rugby + more
• $25/mth

$25/mth

$25/month after 14 days free trial; no lock-in contracts.

Go

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Foxtel Plus Bundle

• iQ4 box & install fees waived
• Foxtel Plus Bundle
• 12 Month Contract
• Set-top Box Included
• 50+ channels
• Enjoy 130 complete drama series
• $49/mth

$49/mth

Min Cost - $588 on a 12 month direct debit plan with iQ4. New customers only.

Go

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Essentials pack

• New customers: All Foxtel Now packs $25/mth for 3 mths. Ends 6 Dec
• Essentials pack
• No Lock-in Contract
• 25+ channels: Lifestyle, Drama, Comedy, Entertainment & more
• Plus all other premium channel packs with Foxtel Now's Cyber Sale
• $25/mth

$25/mth

Min Cost - $25 over 1 month

Go

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Pay Per View

• No Subscription Fee
• Pay Per View
• No Lock-in Contract
• Latest releases from the cinema
• Huge library of movies & tv shows
• $/ days

$/ days

You can only purchase TV shows, not rent them.
Min Cost - Depending on title

Go

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Pop & Lifestyle Essentials Pack - Foxtel Now from Telstra

• New customers: 1 month free
• Pop & Lifestyle Essentials Pack - Foxtel Now from Telstra
• No Lock-in Contract
• The latest TV shows on Telstra TV
• Includes Pop & Lifestyle shows
• $25/mth

$25/mth

Min Cost - Min Cost - $25/mth after 1st month

Go

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Foxtel Plus

• Foxtel Plus
• No Lock-in Contract
• Set-top Box Included
• 50+ entertainment & drama channels
• Foxtel On Demand: access to tv shows & movies
• $49/mth

$49/mth

Min Cost - Min cost $334 (incl. $100 professional install + $35 connection fee + $150 iQ4 box).

Go

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Monthly Subscription

• 30-day free trial
• Monthly Subscription
• No Lock-in Contract
• New docos added weekly
• Watch on your TV with Chromecast and AirPlay
• $7.99/mth

$7.99/mth

$7.99/month after 30 days free trial

Go

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Monthly Subscription

• Free trial
• Monthly Subscription
• No Lock-in Contract
• hayu app: download shows
• 6,500+ episodes of reality TV
• $6.99/mth

$6.99/mth

There is no messy contract to sign, or ugly break-up. You can unsubscribe anytime.

Go

Last audited 29 November 2020

Understanding Australian Pay TV today

Today, pay TV in Australia is as diverse as it’s ever been, with a number of new providers offering different ways to catch your favourite shows, movies and sports. This is great for customers – more competition means more choices, and invariably there are more deals and well-priced plans to take advantage of. The downside, of course, is that the wealth of choice can also make things a little confusing, but the list of top providers below should help to sort things out a little.

The history of Pay TV in Australia

The story of pay TV in Australia is a relatively short but volatile one – starting with intense competition in the mid-90s and ending in a distinct divide between services today. It all began when a company named Galaxy launched their pay TV service using wireless transmitters (sending the signal from towers on the ground rather than satellites). This is where channels like Showtime and Arena made their Australian debuts. But the two dominant telecommunications providers – Telstra and Optus – had plans of their own and had been busy setting them up. While Galaxy launched with a quick and easy wireless system, both Optus and Telstra were working on rolling out proper pay TV cables on a massive scale. This would allow them to offer a huge range of channels.

That rollout was a bit contentious. Telstra was able to put their cables underground using their own phone line tunnels. However, Optus was forced to string hefty cable from power poles – and ultimately many areas got no cable service at all by the time the rollout finished.

Optus managed to launch their service – Optus Vision – in September of that year, closely followed by Telstra’s partnership with News Limited, Foxtel. The rest is, effectively, history. Galaxy lasted only a few years, their customers absorbed into Foxtel. Optus Vision hung on longer but ultimately suffered the same fate, as did regional satellite provider Austar. And where we ended up is with a single conventional pay TV provider, Foxtel.

The story doesn’t end there, though. The arrival of fast broadband internet let some competitors jump in – most notably Fetch TV, which runs a very Foxtel-like service entirely using the internet for its delivery, and with great success.

The future of Pay TV in Australia

Foxtel looks likely to embrace streaming even more in the future. The strong rumour is that the next generation of their iQ series of boxes will be the one that truly blurs the line between live TV and streaming – and pay TV may come to be thought of as “premium TV”.

Whatever happens, one thing is for sure – despite the sudden and enormous threat from the massive take-up of streaming TV, pay TV in Australia isn’t going anywhere. In fact, when it comes to its ability to cover live events – especially sports – there’s nothing that comes close in terms of quality and depth of coverage – though Kayo Sports has changed the game by effectively combined streaming and pay TV to create the most in-depth sports-dedicated platform in the country. Furthermore, pay TV still offers plenty of shows you won’t find on streaming services, not to mention recent movies (and yes, they’re free of commercial breaks and on-screen watermarks!). Pay TV is here to stay.

Foxtel

Review

Foxtel Now

Review

Foxtel from Telstra

Review

Kayo Sports

Review

hayu

Review

Fetch

Review