7.6 Mb/s in November
The Commerce Commission has given Ihug and Callplus a determination similiar to the Telstra-Clear one of Dec 2005 (which they dropped after legal action from Telecom for an inferior negotiated package).
No constraint has been placed on download speeds so 7.6 Mb/s will be available in 18 weeks, or in November. You will need to live close to an exchange to get this though.
The wholesale price of $28.04 a month is higher than I expected though, so too early to predict what effect this may have on retail prices.
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Tags: Internet
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:49 pm
How do you work out how far from an exchange you are? I can find no reference to the location of Telecom’s exchanges on the web.
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Data caps will make this a joke for the inevitable extra price.
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:25 am
As I understand it, the ruling says the service must be unconstrained… ie, only technical limits imposed, no commercial ones.
So say goodbye to no fixed IP address, aggregate billing caps, P2P packet shaping, imposed lag and all the rest UNLESS your ISP wants to do those things.
As to the distance from the exchange, all DSL works in this manner. The further from the exchange (or roadside cabinet) you are, the slower the speed of service.
This was Telecom’s big stick in its negotiations: unconstrained bitstream for all means farmers will get slower internet connections.
It neatly avoids the point that Telecom has been offering this service itself for years (since 1999) albeit with atrocious traffic limits (400MB for the first service, if I recall correctly, with 20c/MB after that. We regularly received emails from parents whose kids had discovered Napster and chalked up a first-month bill of several thousand dollars).