Sophie Maloney: Sky TV CEO on the broadcast outage caused by an aging satellite

Sky says its satellite headache will be solved by early April. 

The broadcaster's apologised after hundreds of customers complained of repeated outages and technicians failing to show up. 

An ageing key satellite is said to be to blame. 

Sky TV Chief Executive Sophie Maloney told Mike Hosking it will be replaced in the coming months. 

She said the team has been working very hard to ensure they’re managing the signal interruption as best they can.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the business of sky TV and it's increasing number
of unhappy customers over satellite issues. We've got an old
satellite moving out of position apparently anyway, Sky CEO Sophie
Maloney's well the Sophie morning me, Mike, how are you
doing very well? Thank you? From my reading over the holidays,
this was going to happen anyway, it's just happened a
little bit faster. Is that correct or not?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, it's happened in an accelerated time frame. We've got
notice at the start of the financial year that we
had seven months LEAs than we thought, so that's meant
we've had to adjust our plans and we're on target
to migrate to the new satellite that Optics is providing.
Would needs to be done by May, but we're now
targeting early April.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
And will it be done by early April or are
you targeting early April?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
It will be done by early April.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
So if whatever is happening right now, by April it's fixed.
Does that make it right between now and April or not?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
No, it does not. And I'm very sorry for the
experience that a number of customers have had during this period.
My team and I working very hard to make sure
that we managing the signal interruption as best we can,
and we know there've been a number of issues and
we're deeply sorry for that. We care about delivering a
great service, So yes, it's another couple of months. We

(01:11):
are making some fixes from a technical perspective that we
think will help with the signal strength, but we're very
sorry for the experience and number of those times.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Is this on you? I mean it is on you
because I give you money, But is it on the
people who supply you the satellite? They've let you down,
haven't they.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, Mike, you're spot on that it's our responsibility to
deliver for our customers and we are. Yes, we've got
issues with some of our partners in terms of the
time frames of delivery. Optics is dependent on other partners
as well for this delivery, and it was certainly not
what we anticipated at the start of the year that
we'd have to do it in this accelerated time frame,
which is why we're seeing some of these signal interruption

(01:48):
issues that we just couldn't have foreshadows.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Are you caught in an old tech ish type world
in a world of streaming where We're talking about satellites
wandering off and running out of petrol and all that.
It all sounds a bit old world to me.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's all about customer choice. We obviously have IP delivered products.
We have ours sky Goo, which is there as an
app for all of our Skybox customers to you every day,
particularly if there are any satellite issues. But no, we're
confident that once this new satellite is in space in
the right place, that customers will be able to enjoy
the experience that they're used to from us. But of

(02:21):
course it's about customer choice. If you want to consume
vin app, you can gos for now Neon two that
we offer up. So for us, it's always about customer choice.
Make some customers do like satellite and if you've done
a roadie around New Zealand recently you see the number
of satellite this is. It remains a really important delivery mechanism.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
It is true. All right, nice to talk to you, Sofie,
you're wishing the best with it, Sophie Maloney, sky TV
CEO Mike Hella Eluja. They increase the cavity bypass to
one hundred and ten before Christmas, but transmission gully like
your roads still one hundred with everyone going faster. And
that's a very very good point. When it's been announced
it's going to be something and it isn't, people just
jump onto it anyway, and then that lies the problem.

(03:00):
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