If you’ve cancelled Foxtel or you’re thinking about it, there’s a good chance the satellite dish is still sitting on your roof doing nothing. It’s one of those things people forget about once the subscription’s gone, and it’s worth knowing what your options actually are, especially with the direction Foxtel itself has been heading lately.
Foxtel is moving away from satellite
Foxtel has been quietly shifting its focus away from residential satellite service. Rather than sending a technician out to fix a satellite fault, Foxtel now generally directs customers to connect their set-top box to the internet instead. Combined with the consolidation of their streaming apps into BINGE, the direction is clear, Foxtel’s future is built around internet delivery, not satellite dishes on rooftops.
For existing satellite customers, this means ongoing support for the old satellite setup is only getting harder to come by. If your dish or receiver develops a fault, don’t be surprised if the response is a suggestion to switch to streaming rather than a repair.
What do you do with the dish?
Once you’ve cancelled Foxtel, the satellite dish and associated cabling generally has no further use for their original purpose. A few options from here:
Have it removed. Most people don’t love having an unused dish sitting on the roof indefinitely, it’s an eyesore, and depending on your roof type it’s an unnecessary penetration point that can become a source of leaks over time if it’s not properly maintained.
Repurpose the mount or cabling. In some cases, the existing mount or cabling run can be reused for a different purpose, like mounting a proper TV antenna or supporting a Starlink installation, rather than starting completely from scratch.
Leave it, but know the risks. If you’re not fussed about the look of it, an unused dish can be left in place, but it’s still worth having it checked periodically, an old, unmaintained mount is one more point of failure on your roof over time.
What replaces it
Since free to air television isn’t going anywhere, most people cancelling Foxtel end up back on a proper TV antenna for their local channels, paired with a streaming setup (BINGE, Netflix, or whatever else) for everything else. If your existing antenna’s old or was never upgraded because Foxtel handled everything, this is often the point where people realise it needs attention too.
Worth getting sorted properly
Whether you want the dish removed, the mount repurposed, or a proper antenna installed to replace what Foxtel used to provide, it’s a straightforward job once it’s done by someone who knows what they’re doing. No point leaving unused hardware on the roof, or ending up with patchy free to air reception because the antenna side of things got overlooked.
