The number of unique visitors to Xtra's broadband site more than tripled during the coverage of the premiere of the Lord of the Rings , however it could have been far greater if Xtra had streamed the live feed from CityLink, says Telecom online marketing manager Chris Thompson.
CityLink arranged for local ISPs to peer with its live feed from central Wellington via the two peering exchanges in Auckland and Wellington. However, while Xtra's technical staff worked on the the project at their end, the marketing and content teams weren't aware of the live feed until fairly late on in the piece, says Thompson.
"It probably wasn't handled well on the day. We would have liked to get the video feed into the broadband service...
"There was a bunch of work going on to make it happen but the time-frame was too tight in the end."
Over 49,000 unique visitors looked at Xtra's page during the course of the day, well up on the usual rate of closer to 15,000 visitors.
Thompson says Xtra does carry footage taken from Television New Zealand's TV One news coverage which is still up on the site today.
CityLink's technical director Richard Naylor says demand for the footage both online and in DVD form is still strong.
"I guess the work will carry on for some time yet".