FWIW, there is a middle option; Orcon tried having a third-party NSP aliased to their news.orcon.net.nz.
From the customer end of things, they had some teething problems. I'm not sure if they solved that or not, but the server works now an seems to be in-house. Anyone at orcon able to provide some details?
Yes we went to an "outsourced" usenet feed for a short time in the past (newsfeeds.com) and it didn't work vey well at all. We have had our own usenet server (feeding from numerous locations) for quite a while now) and it seems to work fine and is being improved all the time (more peers/storage etc) If any other people (in NZ) are interested in NNTP Peering with us (and already have a news server), Please let me know. Thanks Craig Whitmore Orcon Internet Ltd