Verizon has announced that they have signed an alliance with Coinstar, which will see Verizon taking a 65 percent stake in the company. The new streaming video service will be available to anyone with a broadband-Internet connection.
Users will be able to watch movies and television shows via streaming, presenting potential competition with Netflix; rights for that content are still being worked out. Coinstar also owns the Redbox video-rental business that has over 34,000 kiosks nationwide.
“The service will have a Netflix look and feel, which means it will likely offer more generic library content, and not the latest shows and movies, in terms of digital rights,” said Christopher Watts, an analyst at Atlantic Equities LLP in London. “That’s the model Verizon is aiming for.”
“We have 36 million e-mail addresses,” said Coinstar Chief Executive Officer Paul Davis. “That’s a lot of people we can talk to about this new service.”
Redbox is currently used by about 30 million people, according to Rachel Gerber, a spokeswoman for Coinstar. Verizon has 4.2 million customers for its FiOS service while Netflix has 24.4 million subscribers.
Source: BusinessWeek.com {link no longer active}
