When the premiere of the final film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy takes place in Wellington on December 1 CityLink will webcast the event live.
However those wishing to watch will have to lobby their ISPs for coverage. CityLink will be directing coverage to the country's two peering exchanges, in Auckland and Wellington, rather than beaming it directly to end users.
ISPs that peer with the exchanges will be able to offer up the coverage to customers.
CityLink's Richard Naylor says the telco offered a similar service for the two previous premieres and they were extremely popular.
"The data we shift is measured in the terabytes".
The event will be filmed by the host broadcaster, which will have six cameras covering the red carpet, a helicopter and several roving cameras as well, and Naylor says connectivity will be provided via his van.
"I park the van next to the outside broadcast truck and take the feed directly from there."
CityLink already has a series of webcams around central Wellington "just for the fun of it" and one of those is pointed directly at the Embassy Theatre anyway.
"We get a lot of traffic from that one."
Because CityLink offers the service for free, much of the equipment is Naylor's own gear, and the telco hopes to avoid a traffic charge blowout by using the peering exchanges.
"Unfortunately we haven't got anyone willing to set up streaming servers overseas so only local users will be able to access the service."
As a warm up, Naylor says the team will webcast the One Ring dance party the night before.
"I don't know what that will be like. I believe they dress up and there are about 800 of them converging on the St James Theatre."
Interested users would be advised to check with their ISP to see if they are carrying the webcast on the day.