Re: [nznog] Unbudled Bitstream

http://allaboutfrogs.org/stories/scorpion.html sigh. On Thu, 2004-08-12 at 14:32, Keith Davidson wrote:

Certainly appears to be the case. See www.orcon.co.nz/company/press/54318/ text follows below.

Keith Davidson

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"11th August 2004 - New Bitstream plans to remain unchanged

On the 27th of July 2004, Orcon released a new, truly affordable 256k Flat rate residential broadband service for $49.95/mth based on the released 'Bitstream' wholesale DSL specification from Telecom. Two week's after Orcon's product release, Telecom have decided to change the specification by imposing a 10GB average traffic limit per user, and an agreement not to promote static IP addresses with the service. Orcon will honor the initial plans offered to customers at our cost, despite the changes that have been made.

Orcon is currently the second largest provider of JetStream DSL in NZ, and was the first company to negotiate a Wholesale Services Agreement (WSA) with Telecom for a broad range of services. Orcon has been eagerly awaiting the wholesale DSL portion of the WSA to be finalised, as we believe that we can offer the consumer significantly better deals than are currently available.

The moment Telecom told us of their planned Wholesale DSL (UBS) product in early July, we created pricing plans for our own DSL product (based on the Wholesale DSL components we would purchase from Telecom) and set about launching an advertising campaign based on these initial figures - taking a bet that Telecom's final wholesale pricing to us would either be the same or better than the initial figures.

The supposed 'final' UBS specification was released by Telecom on 26th July, and as we had guessed, was slightly better than their initial proposal. Our ads for flat rate 256k DSL with a static IP address at the all-inclusive price of $49.95 started to come out a day later. As far as we were concerned, Telecom had finalised the wholesale deal for DSL that they would offer to us, and we had successfully launched our product.

After a couple of weeks, with many thousands of advertising dollars already spent, and several hundred new DSL customer signed up, Telecom told us that the UBS specification they had come up with was going to be changed. Specifically, the 'flat-rate' nature of the product and the ability to advertise static IP addresses.

We don't know whether the fact that Orcon came out with our flat-rate and static IP address product had anything to do with Telecom changing the specification to withdraw these capabilities, however no other ISPs had come out with any other offering, and therefore our product was seen as a 'reference' product in the market.

However - As a champion for affordable broadband, Orcon has decided to wear the 10GB excess traffic charges at our cost so that we can continue to offer a flat rate product, and we will also honor the static IP address for users who have already signed up from an existing promotion wherever possible.

We believe that it should the ISPs choice whether to offer Static IP addresses or provide a truly flat-rate service.

Seeby Woodhouse MD Orcon Internet Limited"

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Schmidt" To: "nznog" Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 11:58 AM Subject: [nznog] Unbudled Bitstream

...

I heard that TCNZ have changed the details of the UBS service and that now it will be a capped 10gb service. Anyone else know anything about this.

Regards Steven Schmidt.

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