Ihug no more

I’m not overly impressed to read in the newspaper, rather than hear first hand from the ISP I have been with for 12 years, that the Ihug brand is disappearing in April.

I’ve been very loyal to the brand, even during periods where the service went sub-standard.  Part of it was my high regard for the owners Tim & Nick Wood.  It was cool having the ability to chat directly to your ISP owner in Usenet.

I also appreciated that they introduced flat rate Internet pricing, and forced other ISPs to follow suit.  And generally I liked supporting one of the small guys against the big telcos.

In more recent times I’ve also enjoyed working with some of the ISPs on the regulatory issues around broadband etc, and Ihug has been one of the leaders there.

Now this doesn’t mean I am going to get up and leave just because Ihug is disappearing into Vodafone.  The service is still generally bloody good (I haven’t had to call the helpdesk for a long long time) and the prices reasonable.  Data caps still too low, but not sure it is much better anywhere else, and the off peak start time of 2 am is annoyingly late.

Also Vodafone as a company has a pretty good record of innovation, and I am absolutely reliant on their Vodafone data card which is just marvellous for someone like me who travels around NZ a lot.

So very sad to see the Ihug brand disappear, but looking with interest to see what happens as Ihug merges fully into Vodafone. One nice thing they could look at is providing a discount package for people who use them for both ADSL broadband access and mobile Internet access.  They could market this as the home and away package.  Also maybe integrate their Blackberry data plans into a wider package also.

Vodafone get well over $300 a month revenue through the three services I use.  Telecom also tend to be up around the $300 a month mark for my home phone line rental and my 027 cellphone which I made a ridiculously large number of calls on.