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Foxtel Now fixed: “Foxtel unreservedly apologises”

A surge in subscriptions and now a fix for Foxtel Now -but no sign of a refund.

Foxtel has again apologised to Game of Thrones fans affected by last night’s meltdown of Foxtel Now after a 40% spike in subscriptions over the last 48 hours.

It says the service is now fixed and technicians are working to ensure it is not repeated.

Whilst the Pay TV provider apologises “unreservedly” and is adding extra screenings to Showcase, it has not announced any refund for those affected.

“The number of Australians subscribing to Foxtel’s streaming service, foxtel now leapt by 40% in the 48 hours prior to last night’s screening of Episode 1. We expect a record audience of 1.5 million Australians to watch this episode via an iQ box, Foxtel Now or the Foxtel App,” the company said in a statement.

“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’s Identity Management System (IDM), which verifies customers’ entitlement to view content, which usually handles around 5,000 processes a day was hit with 70,000 transactions in just a few hours.

“Unfortunately, due to this massive surge in demand, a significant number of customers experienced difficulty logging in to foxtel now and the Foxtel App. The system was unable to verify some customers’ entitlements. We are unable to say exactly how many customers were affected because the system is unable to separately identify customers who have a problem logging in but later successfully manage to do so.

“We had anticipated heavy usage for last night’s premiere; however, the traffic that eventuated far exceeded expectations. Foxtel’s engineers are examining what steps can be taken to mitigate any recurrence.

“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.

“We note that problems were experienced in the USA, India and Latin America, also driven by the extraordinary surge in demand for the program.

“The system is now working and customers are able to watch the episode either on demand or at an encore screening. Encores are scheduled for today Tuesday, at Midday, and 9.15pm, on Wednesday at 1.20pm, Thursday at 10.10pm, Friday at 11.25am and Saturday at 8.30pm. Foxtel will also add multiple repeat screenings of the episode on the showcase channel.

“Foxtel unreservedly apologises to customers who were affected by this issue.

“We truly appreciate our customers’ patience during last night’s outage and will do everything possible to ensure that this does not occur again.”

7 Responses

  1. I can watch Daredevil in 4K on Netflix and Preacher in 4K on Stan but I can’t watch Police Ten Seven on Foxtel Now without the show freezing every minute.
    This is happening tonight after Foxtel “fixed” the issues.

  2. The message is there for Foxtel if they care to see it, that streaming is the way to go, consumers want to be selective with their content and not be tied to contracts or extra costs for set top boxes, viewers also expect HD to become standard the days of SD are numbered with 4K the main attraction for UHD TV owners. Pricing will also be an issue too as will the number of devices a consumer can use, Untill recently Foxtel have had pay TV to itself and plainly has trouble readjusting its former pay TV empire to the competition. Eventually I would expect Mr Murdoch to internationalise his Pay TV network from a base in the UK or America and customise its content for different geographic zones as does Netflix.

  3. It looks like they’re giving all Foxtelnow customers access to all Foxel channels instead of just the ones they’re subscribed to as compensation for missing out on Game of Thrones the other night.I wonder how long will this last?Two weeks perhaps?

  4. The app didn’t crash. It was the authentication system which the app connects to.

    What gives is that they didn’t anticipate how many people would sign up for new subscriptions shortly before the evening playout of GoT.

  5. Personally i dont have Foxtel, but if i had and had or had chosen to use foxtel now by the way the name is some what stupid because Nine has NineNow, anyway how can a n app crash when its supposedto be viewed by ‘individuals’ not whole bumch of people via the website. I can understand a website crashing or a webbrowser app crashing but an app like foxtel now? that sounds stupid, also if it can crash like that why didint Foxtel anticipate this becasue they know GoT is huge here so what gives? To me it sounds like poor planning from them.

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