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Ex-BigPond chief uploaded to Quickflix

As Quickflix picks up BigPond’s DVD rental business

The former head of Telstra Big Pond and Telstra Media, Justin Milne, will resurface as deputy chairman of Quickflix. Milne's appointment is expected to be announced today.

The announcement comes hot on the heels of Quickflix's impressive coup in snapping up Telstra's BigPond Movies DVD rental business.

Telstra has advised that it will shut down the DVD rental service of BigPond Movies on 30 September 2011.

Quickflix announced to the ASX yesterday that it has entered into a commercial agreement with Telstra, in which Telstra will refer BigPond Movies DVD customers who wish to maintain their service to Quickflix.

The terms of the agreement will see Quickflix make a variable payment to Telstra based on the number of customers who transfer to its DVD rental service. Quickflix will also acquire BigPond's library of DVD and Blu-ray discs and equipment for an undisclosed sum.

Telstra's DVD catalogue was around 44,000 strong and joins the Quickflix library of 50,000 movies, TV series, documentary and sporting titles across 400 genres.

"As a result of this agreement we will significantly increase the depth of our library of latest release and catalogue titles and we'll be servicing the whole of Australia with next day delivery in all major cities," Quickflix founder and executive chairman Stephen Langsford said.

While Telstra dumped its old-school model to ramp up its on demand T-Box IPTV service, it may soon be competing with Quickflix on the digital platform. Langsford confirmed to the Register that the company was on track to go digital in 2011.

Milne's emergence at Quickflix bolsters the company's digital ambitions and will help the company ramp up its aim to launch a digital distribution service by the end of this year.

Langsford said that he recently returned from a trip to the US with Milne, and both executives were buoyed by the US market's appreciation of companies such as Netflix, upon which the Quickflix business model is based – along with that of UK's LoveFilm.

Quickflix has over 80,000 active subscribers, 200,000 online members and has been aggressively growing its social media community presence. ®

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