But he said the company was still working out the prices, plans and packages it would offer customers and would provide the full details once they were ready for release. Optus is still in negotiations with its subscription TV provider Fetch about whether or not it should continue selling the service.

The Optus network as it currently stands is not designed to handle live-streaming across hundreds of thousands of homes because television broadcasters have traditionally been the main providers of such services.

Mr Lew said Optus would upgrade its data centres, part of its core network and services to ensure it is capable of delivering the services to all customers.

"There will be network investments but it's not the same level of magnitude as when we're talking about mobile network upgrades," he said. "Data centres, data servers and making sure the network can handle multicast [are needed].

"What we have to do is upgrade our core network - the network that links to the end points where the customers are connected to."

Good results

Mr Lew spoke to Fairfax Media on the back of Optus' half-year results, which saw the phone and internet giant's net profit for the six-months ending September 30 rise by 8 per cent to $426 million despite losing 44,000 mobile customers.

Optus now has 9.36 million mobile subscribers when wholesale customers are included compared to Telstra's 16.7 million users and Vodafone Hutchison Australia's 4.9 million, which does not include wholesale customers.


It's important to say at this time that we take our obligation [to broadcast English Premier League matches] very seriously – we have a responsibility having acquired this content to make sure it can reach every home.

However, Mr Lew said a key reason for the continuing fall was an active push by Optus to cull inactive users from its customer pool.

"In this quarter you saw us take out 45,000 pre-paid customers who we acquired more than six months ago who are not using their SIMs," he said. "There are also some other non-tolling mobile broadband SIMs in the enterprise segment that we've taken out.

"As we go through the base and weed out all these customers you would expect our overall mobile customer numbers … to start to increase."

Crucially, Optus' lucrative pool of post-paid mobile customers on contracts with the telco continued to rise. This measure increased 4.5 per cent to 4.71 million users during the half year.

By comparison, Telstra's post-paid mobile user base grew by just 32,000 in the six months ending June 30 to 7.3 million subscribers.

Optus revenue for the half year rose 9.3 per cent to $4.6 billion, while earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation rose 7.8 per cent to $1.3 billion.

Big hit to hopes


But Mr Lew warned that Optus' revenues would soon take a major hit thanks to a decision by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to slash the amount money carriers could make from phone calls and text messages.

"In one quarter that's a $200 million hit so that will be a big dampener on our mobile service revenue growth," he said.

The same decision is also set to slash Telstra's mobile revenue by $350 million in 2015-16 alone. However, both companies have been keen to state that the same decision reduces their costs and will therefore have a negligible impact on their profits.

The number of customers on Optus' fixed-line services rose 2.8 per cent to 1.05 million, thanks largely to its growing pool of users on the national broadband network. Optus now has 72,000 NBN customers.