About Us - Our History

January 1995	Australis, branded as Galaxy, distributes Australia's first broadcast subscription television services to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
August 1995	AUSTAR (then known as CETV) services commence commercially (OPTUS subscription television services commence in September and FOXTEL in October).
1998	AUSTAR establishes a 50/50 joint venture satellite platform, jointly owned with OPTUS. AUSTAR acquires East Coast Television.
Feb 1999	Number of AUSTAR television subscribers reaches 300,000.
July 1999	AUSTAR listed on ASX ("AUN”).
2000	AUSTAR deploys interactive television services. AUSTARnet commences services. AUSTARmobile commences services. Number of AUSTAR television subscribers reaches 400,000. AUSTAR merged its New Zealand operations, Saturn Communications, in a joint venture with Telstra New Zealand to form TelstraSaturn Limited, which in December became TelstraClear
December 2002	AUSTAR, FOXTEL and OPTUS commence new content sharing agreements.
March 2003	AUSTAR divests its 42% interest in NZ's TelstraClear.
April 2003	CHAMP acquires an interest in AUSTAR's majority shareholder, United Austar Partners (UAP), from UGC. Together, through UAP, UGC and CHAMP own and control 80.5% of AUSTAR shares.
June 2003	AUSTAR migrates its satellite television signal to a new satellite (named C1), increasing its satellite coverage area by 200,000 new homes. FOXTEL assumes ownership and operation of the satellite platform, AUSTAR becomes a customer of FOXTEL's satellite platform.
August 2003	AUSTAR completes Rights issue
October 2003	Telstra commences re-selling AUSTAR television to its customers in regional Australia.
January 2004	AUSTAR announces the new channels which will operate under the enhanced service of New AUSTAR Digital.
7 March 2004	New AUSTAR Digital is launched
14 April 2004	AUSTAR gains 100,000 subscribers to New AUSTAR Digital, bringing its total number of subscribers to 443,000
17 May 2004	BOX OFFICE is launched
23 June 2004	Sports Active is launched
3 August 2004	AUSTAR announces its highest ever subscriber figures, with 467,000 subscribers to its television service, more than 200,000 of these already switched to New AUSTAR Digital
12 August 2004	SKY News Active is launched
1 October 2004	Italian and Greek channels RAI and Antenna join AUSTAR
November 2004	AUSTAR launches AUSTAR Digital cable in Darwin
4 November 2004	Virgin Blue, AUSTAR and FOXTEL launch ‘Live2Air’ an in-flight entertainment service.
1 December 2004	The Australian Christian Channel is launched
17 January 2005	Fox Sports Active tennis launches on AUSTAR
1 February 2005	Crime & Investigation Network channel, and regional-feed ABC launch on AUSTAR
2 March 2005	AUSTAR has more than 300,000 Digital subscribers
20 April 2005	AUSTAR’s CEO, John Porter, wins the award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Subscription Television by the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association
25 April 2005	AUSTAR has more than 500,000 total subscribers
6 September 2005	AUSTAR and FOXTEL today announced that more than 1.1 million Australian homes now had access to captioning services, providing Deaf and hearing impaired viewers with a wide range of captioned subscription television programming.
14 December 2005	Liberty Global Inc (Liberty Global) increased its indirect ownership of AUSTAR United Communications to 54% (51% on a fully diluted basis) through an acquisition of additional interests in our controlling shareholder United Austar Partners. The additional interests were acquired from private equity funds affiliated with CHAMP Private Equity (CHAMP) and Castle Harlan, Inc (CHI). CHAMP and CHI sold their remaining interest to institutional investors.
26 April 2006	AUSTAR wins two ASTRA Awards - Most Outstanding Consumer Campaign - Subscriber Sales and Most Outstanding Consumer Campaign - Subscriber Retention.
8 June 2006	AUSTAR Broadband is officially launched in Wagga Wagga.
7 July 2006	Lesley Portwain and Rebecca Durdev from Customer Service take out individual honours at the Australian Teleservices Association Awards, for Call Centre Manager of the Year and Teleprofessional of the Year respectively.
26 November 2006	AUSTAR Broadband launches in Tamworth.
1 December 2006	Sci-Fi Channel launches on AUSTAR
31 December 2006	AUSTAR has more than 600,000 total subscribers
8 February 2007	AFL is set to air on AUSTAR for the 2007-2011 seasons, delivering subscription television customers more AFL coverage than any other network.