Telecom and Commerce Commission quiet over talks

11.30am - By PAUL BRISLEN

Telecom's wholesale team has met with the Commerce Commission over its proposed wholesale high-speed internet service, but neither side is commenting on the discussions.

Telecom has suspended the rollout of its wholesale service after the Commission released a statement warning internet providers that Telecom's service differed significantly from the regulated service the commission wanted.

Telecom's manager for wholesale strategy and planning Martin Butler said the meeting was held yesterday but both he and the Commission's manager of network access Osmond Borthwick were continuing discussions behind closed doors.

"We've agreed not to make any public comment at this stage".

The Commission released its warning after Telecom announced it would introduce new terms and conditions to the wholesale agreement it was negotiating with a number of internet providers.

Auckland-based provider Orcon had begun advertising a service with no traffic limits, however Telecom has introduced an aggregate traffic average of 10 GB (gigabytes) per user per month.

Borthwick told the Herald earlier this week that Telecom appeared to use its existing JetStream Surf retail service as a reference and that "acted as a kind of limit to the feature set that they offer to wholesalers".

The wholesale offer from Telecom was limited to a single speed, 256 kbps (kilobits per second) download speed. Instead, he said, the commission wanted Telecom to offer a range of options including faster connection speeds.

TelstraClear's manager for Government relations, Grant Forsyth, told the Herald his company tried to negotiate a higher level of service with Telecom but was offered the same service as every other provider.

Auckland telco CallPlus would also like to offer more variation, according to co-founder Malcolm Dick.

"I'll be contacting Telecom to ask for 1.5 mbps [megabits per second] if that's the case." Dick said the competing internet providers have had no choice but to sign up for Telecom's offer at the moment because Telecom has withdrawn its other fast internet services from wholesale.

"We have to sign up if we want to offer our customers any of those services at all."