Now, I'm all for competition and the theory is that such should increase availability and quality of product or service. However, this goes out the window when there are only a few players on the market – the result here (as it is with other markets with similar oligopolistic structures) is that you end up paying a significant net increase in costs for a similar service which cost less and delivered more in the past.
So, in spite of the temptation of English Premier League Football and the RWC, I'm not going to jump on board. It is also interesting to read the accounts of users who have been having issues with the streaming platform and more interesting to see the spin doctors going crazy trying to make a bad situation look, well, less bad. You even had the CEO learning the hard way when tweeting about awesome success of the platform the day before the real "test" (ABs vs Springboks) that some tweets don't age well and web statements (like diamonds) are forever.
Kudos to Spark for putting some of the games on free to air while it sorted out issues but downplaying the issues in the media didn't sit well, as I know of people in my circle of friends who had mixed experiences. Even today, as last night Twitter was alight with people having negative experiences, Spark continues to say it's "all good". Although the "It's not us, it's you" line is probably spinning it in the wrong direction – all the user has to think is "How often did I have to turn Sky off at the wall?"
I remember a movie back in the 90s which had a team of people tell the truth about products in advertising slogans ( it had lines like "Volvo, boxy but safe" I recall) – how refreshing it would be if, instead of spin, we actually had these mega businesses telling it like it really was. Perhaps Spark could use "Streaming All Black pixels, it's power switching good".
