Sky and Vodafone have formally abandoned plans to merge.

The two issued a terse statement making this clear to the New Zealand Stock Exchange on Monday. It gave no reasons but said they have withdrawn their appeal to the High Court protesting the Commerce Commission's decision earlier this year to reject their merger application.

The marriage may be off, but the two companies remain good friends. Such good friends, that they still intend to deepen their relationship.

Vodafone to offer Sky TV as a lure

An example of this came early in June when Vodafone announced it would give free Sky Sport for 12 months to customers buying Vodafone broadband and a basic Sky TV service.

Elsewhere Vodafone mobile customers can get a deal which includes a free Sky Neon service and Sky is providing Vodafone with live coverage of All Blacks matches. The phone company is now the team's sponsor.

In February, the Commerce Commission decided a proposed $3.5 billion merger between the two would reduce competition.

It said Sky and Vodafone had an opportunity to create a vertically integrated business that would give a single telecommunications player access to almost all popular sports broadcasting rights. There was a fear the market power wielded by the new business would lock out other potential bidders.

Now rivals fear the two non-merged businesses are building a form of vertical integration without all the parts being in a single company.

TVNZ to livestream all programmes

Television New Zealand has bowed to the inevitable. From Monday, the state-owned broadcaster will livestream channels 1 and 2. Viewers will be able to see all broadcast material over the internet on PCs, tablets and phones. Everything will be available online in HD 720p format. There will also be a new catch-up on-demand service.

At Stuff, Tom Pullar-Strecker reports TVNZ is offering more material in a box-set format for binge viewers. He speaks to TVNZ general manager of technology Greg Montgomery, who says: "We have to acknowledge there is an influence like Netflix in the market".

From next month TVNZ will add Chromecast support with Apple TV support coming later this year.

Among other changes the new streaming service will be optimised for viewing on mobile devices and programmes will be available online for longer than in the past.

For now, there are no plans to do anything about television transmission, although that could be revisited in the future.

Industry News:

Spark Qrious unit adds big data as a service

Spark's Qrious unit continues to put pressure on autocorrect spell checkers with the launch of Qonnect. It's a way of giving companies better, more affordable access to big data. The company describes it as a single place to store and manage data from almost any source.

Revera, Spark's cloud division, hosts Qonnect here in New Zealand. The service draws on Cloudera’s big data ecosystem. This includes Apache Spark and Hadoop. Customers can call on experienced specialists to help start their big data projects.

Copyright Act review

The government has released the terms of reference for an overdue review of the Copyright Act which dates from 1994.

Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Jacqui Dean says: "Launching a review now will also build on the insights of the Government’s Study of the role of copyright and designs in the creative sector, completed last year."

The idea is to get a copyright regime that works with fast-changing technology. There's a good chance things will have moved on again by the time fresh legislation is drawn up.

What keeps Telco bosses awake at night?

Global accounting group BDO says telcos around the world are getting more nervous about regulation. The Brussels-based group's 2017 Telecommunications Risk Factor Survey notes twice as much concern about regulation as previous surveys.

It says: "The proportion of telecoms companies citing regulatory change and uncertainty as a critical risk has taken a dramatic jump, from 42 percent to 80 percent. This contrasts with 2016 survey results, when currency fluctuations, interest rates and liquidity mostly preoccupied telecoms executives."

BDO’s survey found five risks keep telecom executives awake at night:

The digital transformation agenda
The regulatory burden
The growth of cyber warfare
The volatile macroeconomic and political environment
The infrastructure investment challenge

It sounds gloomy. Christian Goetz, Head of BDO’s global telecommunications industry sector group says: “The average revenue per customer in the telecoms industry is falling and customer loyalty is decreasing as choice proliferates. Business customers and particularly SMEs, once a captive market, are now also moving towards OTT providers and new technologies."

One of the regulatory burdens mentioned are the new European data roaming rules. Also telcos face new accounting rules that require them to report more debt on their balance sheets.

Ten more Iridium satellites

Iridium says the 10 satellites launched earlier this week are now in orbit. They are working normally and testing has begun. This week's launches bring the total number of Iridium Next satellites in orbit to 20. The company plans to launch a total of 75 by July 2018.

The satellite communications company says it is the only network with 100 percent global coverage. The new satellites will upgrade the existing network giving customers better call quality and faster data speeds.