New Zealand internet service provider, Slingshot, has revealed the existence of its in house virtual private network (VPN) is so that local customers can easily access Netflix and other blocked sites.
For the past year Slingshot has already offered a service called “Global Mode”, supposedly letting households with international visitors sign up and have access to certain geoblocked websites.
It also, not so secretly, worked as a loophole for New Zealand customers wanting to access websites such as Netflix and Hulu which are blocked in some parts of the world. Now Slingshot’s general manager has come right out and confirmed this.
“No beating around the bush. This is to watch Netflix, this is to watch BBC iPlayer, this is to watch Hulu, this is to watch Amazon Prime,” Slingshot general manager Taryn Hamilton told the New Zealand Herald.
“This is basically going to enable that to happen…any Slingshot customer by default if they type in Netflix, it will work. If they type in Hulu it will work,” he said. While a few of the aforementioned online content providers still require users to register with a valid US zip code, Hamilton said Slingshot has nothing to do with that part of the process.
“This is just enabling people to consume those services if they want to,” he said “Kiwis deserve to watch the same stuff that guys in the States do and at the same price.” He said he did not expect their decision to be challenged by the US streaming giant Netflix.
“Netflix is well aware how many people are consuming it from outside of the countries they’re located in but it’s incremental money for them which is incremental money for the [copyright] holders…it’s not as if you’re getting it for free. Someone’s still paying a fair price for a fair service,” Hamilton said.
An estimated 200,000 Australians already use Netflix, paying international subscription fees and avoiding geographic restrictions with the help of specialised VPNs. Reports suggest Netflix is now in a third year of negotiations with Australian content holders and is expected to make a move in the market sometime in 2015, though there are doubts as to the variety of content that will be made available if it were to launch in Australia.
“Like Australia, content options in New Zealand are either too limited or too expensive,” Hamilton told CNET. “We know people want to pay for content, this lets them do so. We think it will help combat piracy. In the long run, we’d like all the content providers to sell directly to New Zealanders — we know that the services would be really popular.”
