Tag on Telecom refund

By MICHAEL FOREMAN and RICHARD BRADDELL

Telecom says it will refund users who have paid charges for non-0867 internet access but only if they switch to the controversial single prefix scheme.

The offer comes after a temporary interconnection agreement between Telecom and Clear Communications, signed on Sunday.

Telecom spokeswoman Linda Sanders said the 2c-a-minute charge would be waived for the three-and-a-half month agreement period beginning last Monday.

Charges incurred before that date would remain unless users moved to 0867, in which case they would be refunded in full.

Ms Sanders confirmed that the offer applied to users of all internet service providers including ClearNet and free internet services.

"It doesn't matter where you come from. As long as you switch over to 0867, you'll have your charges refunded."

Free internet provider i4free welcomed the truce because it cements in interconnection payments that were set to be disputed in court.

"There has been an acceptance by Telecom, albeit for three months at this stage, that there is an interconnection payment due," said an i4free founder, Annette Presley.

The advent of free internet, based at least in part on the sharing of termination revenue between i4free and its home network, Clear Communications, was the flashpoint for a high temperature row that erupted again two months ago over Telecom's imposition of 0867 internet access.

Free internet subscriber numbers have exploded, with i4free claiming 52,000 users while Clear's own provider, Zfree, has picked up 40,000 in a matter of weeks.

The extent to which people are signing up with more than one free provider, and the time spent using them, is not disclosed.

"It's great," Ms Presley said of the weekend pact. "It's been a catalyst to Telecom agreeing that the residential [internet] calls are now free. Hopefully, that's the basis they will continue to negotiate on."

Ms Presley's remarks go some way to clarifying that Clear will continue to receive interconnection revenue from Telecom for completing local internet calls.

That point was left dangling by the two telcos, which stated that revenue arrangements were to remain confidential.

However, Telecom's chief executive, Theresa Gattung, indicated that the agreement was not dissimilar to one proposed earlier this year and rejected by Clear.

Within certain limits, that offer had preserved Clear's rights to interconnection revenue until the interconnection agreement expired at the end of the year.

Ms Presley reiterated that while i4free had been accused of being totally reliant on a share of interconnection revenue, its business plan had been constructed in the expectation that that would end when Clear's current interconnection agreement expired in December.

If Clear and Telecom failed to reach an agreement by the end of August, then Telecom would reinstate the regime under which it imposed a 2c-a-minute charge after 10 hours of local dial-up access unless callers were using the 0867 prefix.