Telecommunications giant Telstra has bought a 51 per cent stake in content aggregation company Fetch TV for $50 million, as it battles Apple and Google to dominate living rooms.

The deal, first revealed by this masthead last month means Telstra will use Fetch’s platform for its Telstra TV offering, which currently has about 800,000 active subscribers.

It also coincides with a delay to the IPO of pay TV and cable company Foxtel, which is jointly owned by Telstra and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Telstra TV currently operates on a platform provided by US equipment maker Roku, but the deal between the two companies is set to expire. Fetch is a long-term content provider for rival telcos including Optus and Vocus.

“Becoming a trusted partner in the home remains an important growth opportunity for Telstra,” Telstra’s product and technology executive Kim Krogh Andersen said in a statement. “As homes become more digitally connected, the integration of that technology – including the smart modem, smart meter and a platform for streaming media which can also be used for AR, VR and the metaverse – will become even more critical.”

Fetch was launched in Australia in 2008 by Malaysian telco Astro, which own 80 per cent of the business. It sells internet connected set-top boxes that give customers access to vast array of content, including from streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video (subscriptions to these services must still be purchased).

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It also provides international and local television channels, online TV services and upcoming films and television series. The set-top boxes can be bought outright but are also included as add-ons to internet packages with broadband providers including Optus and Vocus (which owns Iprimus and Dodo). Fetch’s app will continue to be used by Optus on its content aggregation platform, SubHub.