Vodafone offers options after cable TV service scrapped

Vodafone NZ is scrapping the cable television service that it provides in Christchurch and Wellington and offering to move about 6500 customers on to alternative technology.

Vodafone said the changes were needed as the technology on which its ‘‘Tbox’’ set-top boxes and older cable broadband modems ran would become obsolete and stop working later this year.

It is offering to replace the Tboxes, which work similarly to Sky satellite set-top boxes, with Vodafone TV devices, which instead stream television over the internet.

Tboxes and Vodafone TV can both be used to watch Sky TV channels if customers pay for that, and the Vodafone TV devices can also be used to access other internet-TV services such as Netflix.

But some customers have questioned on social media whether the streaming service is an equivalent substitute for them.

Gripes include the user interface of Vodafone TV, which some argue makes programme menus harder to read, the fact it stores recorded programmes ‘‘in the cloud’’ rather than on the device, and it not being able to record some free-to-air programmes.

Vodafone spokeswoman Rebecca Huang said it could understand that a lot of customers ‘‘would be very used to their Tbox and how it works’’.

‘‘Unfortunately, the reality of it is that there aren’t like-for-like alternatives – technology has changed over the years.’’

Some of the interfaces of Vodafone TV were a little bit different ‘‘but we are going to provide full support, talking it through and helping people figure out how to use their Vodafone TV’’, she said.

If customers wanted to instead switch to Sky’s satellite TV service and install MySky, Vodafone would assist with that handover to Sky, Huang said. ‘‘We think Vodafone TV is the best option, but our agents can talk customers through that process. We have a good relationship with Sky.’’

Customers would not need to renew a contract when they switched to Vodafone TV, so could potentially try the streaming service and then change to subscribing to Sky direct if they found it difficult to use.

Vodafone will also switch customers’ landlines from cable to run over the internet at the same time as switching over their TV service.

That change means customers’ home phones – like phones connected to the ultrafast broadband (UFB) network and in future all landlines – will no longer work in a power cut.