Slowly across Europe all the tier 1 MNOs are launching OTT TV services and the latest this week is A1, owned by Telekom Austria, itself now controlled by America Movil.
The new service A1 Now offers 40 channels of linear TV, with 9 of them in HD, and delivery is over the open internet and comes with a network PVR which allows 7 day catch up and the ability to record 10 hours of TV and an extensive VoD library.
A1 TV was originally one of the many IPTV services launched in Europe, and has attracted some 244,000 homes, but this is more about pushing the TV service to Telekom Austria’s almost 20 million mobile customers on both iOS and Android devices via a free App.
A1 Now is available to all A1 customers who have specific smartphone tariffs or with an A1 broadband line installed during the past 2 years. The new A! Go tariffs have been created for LTE using Carrier Aggregation, which comes with 15 GB of free data at speeds up to 300 Mbps. Telekom Austria has been one of the first operators in Europe to use Carrier Aggregation in LTE and launched the service last July at €75 a month.
The A1 Now service was beta tested during 2015 with 1,000 people and will initially be free for A1 Go! Premium customers throughout 2016 and then cost €7.90 a month. It advises anyone else that they should be on at least a 2GB of data in their month contract, if they are not on the A1 Go! deal.