Skip to footer

Verizon, Redbox team up to take on Netflix

Verizon and Red Box will soon roll out a streaming video service, which will compete with Netflix.

|
Isaac Brekken/AP/FILE
In this Jan. 6, 2012 photo, attendees check out the unveiling of 4G devices at the Verizon booth during the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas. Challenging Netflix, Verizon said Monday, Feb. 6, 2012, it will start a video streaming service later this year in cooperation with Redbox and its DVD rental kiosks.
  • By Peter Svensson Associated Press

| NEW YORK

Phone company Verizon Communications Inc. will challenge Netflix and start a video streaming service this year with Redbox and its DVD rental kiosks.

Verizon and Coinstar Inc., Redbox's parent, say the service will be national and available to non-Verizon customers as well. It adds another leg to Verizon's quest to become a force in home entertainment, and it looks set to compete to some extent with the cable-TV services it already sells.

Verizon has its own cable-TV service, called FiOS, in some areas. Its Verizon Wireless subsidiary has also signed a deal to sell service from Comcast Corp. and other cable companies in its stores.

With the Redbox venture, Verizon is breaking ranks with the cable and satellite industry, which makes its own video streaming services available only to people who also subscribe to its traditional TV feeds. They don't want households switching to Internet-only services, which are cheaper — Netflix charges $8 per month for its video streaming plan.

Verizon's own FiOS business is relatively small, with 4.2 million subscribers, making it the seventh-largest provider of TV signals to U.S. homes. Meanwhile, its landline phone business is shrinking, so it needs other avenues for growth. Its wireless arm is growing, but it owns only 55 percent of that venture. (Vodafone Group PLC of Britain owns the rest.)

Verizon and Coinstar didn't reveal prices or other details of their service. It's intended to give subscribers access to DVD and Blu-ray discs as well as streaming movies starting in the second half of the year, they said.

New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. will own 65 percent of the unnamed venture, with Bellevue, Wash.,-based Coinstar Inc. owning the rest. Redbox is contributing an initial $14 million to the venture, according to a regulatory filing. It did not say how much Verizon would contribute.

In morning trading Monday, Coinstar's stock gained 31 cents to $49.97. Verizon shares rose 6 cents to $37.90. Netflix shares fell $3.61, or 2.9 percent, to $122.82.

Netflix already has a couple of powerful competitors with video streaming services. Amazon.com Inc. provides a library of movies and TV shows to subscribers to its Amazon Prime shipping services. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, has a streaming service called Vudu.

Neither of these competitors combines Internet delivery of movies with DVDs, like Netflix does. However, Netflix started charging separately for its DVDs-by-mail and online streaming services last year, saying DVDs are on their way out and Internet delivery is its focus.

Netflix alienated customers even more when it said it would split the two services completely, forcing customers to deal with two movie queues. It backed off that plan after an outcry, demonstrating that customers found value in the combination of Internet movies and discs from one company.

Redbox appears to have benefited from Netflix's troubles, picking up some of the customers who have defected from its DVD service. It now claims to be the biggest DVD rental service in the country, thanks to its more than 28,000 kiosks in drugstores and supermarkets.

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut. And don’t forget to sign up for the weekly BizTech newsletter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Verizon, Redbox team up to take on Netflix
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2012/0206/Verizon-Redbox-team-up-to-take-on-Netflix
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe