Cheaper faster broadband

The Commerce Commission has come out with what looks to be a very positive determination on the broadband unbundled bitstream service.

This has been a major issue for InternetNZ. We ended up spending close to $100,000 on submissions, cross-submissions, a conference, a technical workshop and general legal issues. I spent two days at the main commission conference in July, and generally got the feel it was going to be a good outcome.

I’ve yet to read the detailed determination (and it is not yet final) but the major aspects appear to be:

* No artifical limits on speed at the wholesale level. This will mean up to 7.6 Mb/s in many areas.

* A wholesale fee of $26.57 for the full-speed service. Telecom may offer cheaper fees for lesser speeds. This isn’t as cheap as hoped for, but still a definite improvement on the status quo.

* No differential in wholesale fees customers differently for business and residential access. Business customers may outraegous prices for broadband – sometimes almost tens times as much as residential. Now it will be one price for one service at the wholesale level.

Note that different ISPs will offer different retail packages based on this. Too early to predict quite what they will be, but there should be considerable variety.

News: NZ Herald and Computerworld.