The HOT cable TV company hopes to recruit people in droves to its brand-new offering - Internet service.
Until now, people who wanted Internet access needed the services of two companies: one to provide the Internet infrastructure, and one to provide the Internet service.
The two companies capable of providing infrastructure - a cable into your home - are Bezeq and HOT.
HOT has been in the Internet infrastructure business for some time, offering the service either as a stand-alone product or as part of its triple-play offering: Internet infrastructure, telephony service and cable television.
But infrastructure is not enough. To surf, the user also needs an Internet service provider. That is a company that has servers and brings you the actual access to the World Wide Web, Internet, from elsewhere in the world.
Now for the first time, customers can get both their infrastructure and their Internet service from the same company.
Aggressive pricing
HOT hopes they will choose to do so. It is pricing its Internet service aggressively, at just NIS 20 a month - a fraction of what competitors such as 012 Smile, 013 NetVision and Bezeq International charge.
Those three Internet service providers companies each supply about a third of the market.
Although HOT provides triple-play service, the Communications Ministry, headed by Moshe Kahlon, has prohibited it from providing quadruple-play - which means it can't bundle its new Internet service with its triple-play offering and offer a single price for all. Internet service will be handled by a completely separate division, called HOTnet.
HOT received licensing to provide Internet service back in December 2010. But it sat tight and waited, hoping the regulator would relent and allow it to offer quadruple-play. That did not happen.
In parallel, HOT announced the launch of two new triple-play packages on Tuesday: the Silver package for NIS 279 a month, and the Gold package for NIS 329 a month.
The Gold package includes all cable television channels including 14 high-definition channels, a recording signal converter (so users can tape TV shows ), unlimited phone calls within Israel to cellular or landline numbers, and high-speed (100 Mbps ) Internet infrastructure. If the client signs up for HOT's Internet service as well, the total cost is NIS 20 more - NIS 349 a month.
Until now, few Israeli households hooked up to 100 Mbps connections because of the prohibitive price - HOT had been charging NIS 600 a month for the infrastructure (independent of its cable service ). Now the company will be charging NIS 179. Again, the Internet service itself is an extra NIS 20.
The campaign advertising the new offers starts on Wednesday, and will be aired on television, billboards, radio and in the press.
Israel's other Internet service providers professed outrage at HOT's aggressive pricing, claiming the deals would lose the company money. But the only one who would speak out openly, and even wrote a letter of protest to the Communications Ministry and the Antitrust Authority, was Itzik Ben-Eliezer, CEO of a small Internet service provider canned Xfone 018. He argues that HOT is subsidizing this new venture with its other activities.
In his letter, Ben-Eliezer notes that HOT is suddenly launching this new service for NIS 20 a month, a day after announcing sweeping price increases for all its other services.
