KEY POINTS:
Competition in wholesale broadband is heating up with the launch of a new product from Telecom, just a day after rival Vodafone announced a move into the market.
Telecom is touting enhanced unbundled bitstream access (UBA) as the first of a new family of network products allowing service providers to offer customers real-time next generation services.
Telecom Wholesale is making it available to service providers after trialling it with CallPlus and South Island internet service provider Snap.
Yesterday, Vodafone announced a broadband wholesale market deal with Slingshot, the residential brand of company Callplus.
The deal gives Slingshot wholesale access to Vodafone's so-called Red Network, Vodafone's own fixed-line network being built by putting equipment into Telecom's exchanges.
So far Vodafone has done the work on 34 exchanges in Auckland, with the aim of reaching 40 by the end of the year, after which it will look at moving into other main centres.
Slingshot general manager Mark Callander said the competition being created in the wholesale market, was "ideal for creating competition at a retail level".
"It's giving more cost-effective access and also enabling competitors like ourselves to innovate and take greater control over services," he said.
Slingshot was obviously only wholesaling with Vodafone where it had its Red Network deployed, and in those cases was mainly focused on residential customers.
Enhanced UBA came into play for Callplus more from a business perspective, enabling Callplus to develop IP-based services for business customers.
Telecom Wholesale chief executive Matt Crockett said the new enhanced UBA products would pave the way for service providers to offer customers multiple digital voice connections, high-quality video conferencing, improved remote working and home security systems, all over a single access in the home.
Enhanced UBA included a channel dedicated to real-time IP (internet protocol) traffic, such as voice or video, and a second channel specifically for internet.
Future variants were expected to include additional dedicated channels built to cater for services, such IPTV or video-on-demand.
"In an increasingly competitive wholesale market this is a critical first step to offering services to our customers that will bring the concept of IP services to life in New Zealand homes," said Crockett.
Enhanced UBA would be available nationally where Telecom had deployed next generation Ethernet broadband technology, also called ADSL2+.
Now, 56 per cent of fixed line broadband customers were served by ADSL2+ and that would increase to more than 80 per cent in the next three years.
- NZPA
