We love our Kiwi cousins here at Gizmodo, so it’s with a heavy heart we regret to inform them that US movie streaming company netflix has completely rejected the potential for the service to launch in New Zealand. But there may still be hope for Australia…
According to the NZ Herald, Netflix VP of Product Innovation Brent Ayrey told the ITEX business tech summit in Auckland that the company wouldn’t be launching in NZ due to restrictive download limits and problems obtaining content rights.
Ayrey is quoted as saying that figures have shown that next year the average US Netflix customer will need one terabyte of bandwidth every month for movie streaming using the service. Given that New Zealand doesn’t offer anything close to a 1TB plan, Netflix has had to rule out a launch in the land of the All Blacks.
But! You know who does offer 1TB plans? Australia. Plus we have a world class fibre broadband network rolling out as we speak. While the company is kind of occupied preparing for its UK rollout next year, it did say that Asia is key to its international expansion plans back in June. And you know what country is almost in Asia? Australia.
So, while our Kiwi cousins lament their lack of Netflix, let’s keep fingers and toes crossed that no blatant rejection is good news for our hopes of an Aussie Netflix launch.
[NZ Herald via The Register]