   austar was an australian telecommunications company. its main business activity was subscription television but it has also been involved with internet access and mobile phones. it was founded in 1994 under the name community entertainment television (cetv). austar's television subscriber base grew to 747,148 (at 30 june 2010), making it the largest subscription television operator in regional and rural australia. austar provided subscription television services in a service area of approximately 2.4m homes, one-third of australia's total homes, primarily using digital satellite technology. austar also operated a digital cable network in darwin. austar is now owned by foxtel, which acquired the company in 2012. since the acquisition, foxtel has progressively merged all operations into a national system. in mid-to-late 2013, foxtel merged all accounts to foxtel and removed the mystar related online services. this was the last step in the merge. in november 2013, the foxtel iq units were made available with satellite connections for those who wished to replace their mystar units. from 2014 onwards, the austar brand will no longer be used. austar was involved with providing services to sega channel in australia in partnership with sega ozisoft, a joint venture between sega and ozisoft. ==foxtel takeover== on 11 july 2011, austar announced that "it had entered into definitive transaction agreements with liberty global, inc. (lgi) and foxtel management pty limited (foxtel) under which foxtel 
Australian_subscription_television_services Australian_television_networks Companies_based_in_Sydney Companies_established_in_1994 Entertainment_companies_of_Australia Media_companies_of_Australia