Andrew :
@parsley
Let’s say that all ISPs in New Zealand had a deal with TiVo and YouTube to allow free access to those sites (is that what you mean by ‘not exclusive’?) on a permanent basis.
Not quite. I meant exclusive in the sense that the Tivo deal is exclusive to Telecom because if you’re with another ISP you can’t connect at all. Not very well explained, I agree. I probably should have said it was an exclusive monopoly.
I can see what you’re getting at, but I think for a new player to compete with YouTube would be incredibly difficult anyway. There are plenty of alternatives (Vimeo, Metacafe, etc) so they don’t have a monopoly yet, but having a blank cheque from Google is probably their greatest competitive advantage.
NZ traffic is relatively tiny compared to the rest of the online world, so even if every NZ ISP offered free access to YouTube it would make very little difference to them or their competitors. I can see how your argument would work for NZ-specific sites but I don’t think there’s an example at the moment. Orcon provides free access to George FM but I’m not going to listen to them exclusively just because they’re free (I’m a bFM man myself).
