Foxtel Not Working? Here’s How To Avoid Game Of Thrones Crashing

The online demand for Game Of Thrones Season 7 sent Foxtel’s servers into meltdown last week. This resulted in thousands of customers being unable to watch the premiere due to “technical glitches” with the service.

After last week’s debacle, many customers are understandably anxious about today’s episode, which is scheduled to appear at 11am AEST. If you’re planning to access the show legally, here are some tips to improve your chances of watching it “live”.

For those who missed the headlines, an undisclosed number of Foxtel customers were unable to watch Game Of Thrones last week until after the initial broadcast. For fans, this was like being forced to watch State Of Origin the day after the match.

“The combination of new foxtel now customers signing up and existing customers upgrading to get the Drama Pack so they could watch the show, put unprecedented pressure on our technical operations,” Foxtel explained at the time.

“Unfortunately, due to this massive surge in demand, a significant number of customers experienced difficulty logging in to foxtel now and the Foxtel App.”

After royally stuffing up the Game Of Thrones Season 7 premiere (and pissing away a lot of the good will its new pricing had generated), Foxtel will be pulling out all the stops to ensure episode 2 runs as smoothly as possible. But nothing in life is guaranteed.

There is still a chance that something will go wrong, just like it did last week. So what can you do about it?

New customers

If you’re a new customer, you should have signed up to Foxtel Now a few days ago. Explains Foxtel:

Given that the problems were driven by the volumes of people who sought to sign up on the day of broadcast Foxtel advises others who wish to sign up before next week’s episode to do so a few days in advance.

This doesn’t help you now (unless you have a time machine) but at least you know what to do for next week’s episode.

Existing customers

If you’re getting an ‘AS4044’ error message, Foxtel recommends logging out of the service and logging back in. Here are the steps:

  1. Select Settings
  2. Scroll down to and select LOG OUT
  3. When logout is completed, select Log In and Select Log Me In!
  4. Type in your login details and select LOG IN
  5. Retry the Foxtel Now or Foxtel Play app. If the same issue reappears, repeat Step 1

Foxtel also suggests rebooting your modem and viewing device to refresh the internet connection, changing picture settings to Low and restarting the Foxtel Play app. You can find troubleshooting tips for specific hardware here.

With a little luck, you should be able to get the episode up and running by following these steps. And if not, well, there are other ways to access the show as I’m sure you’re all aware.


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