Telecom pulling the plug on overtaken Jetstart

By PAUL BRISLEN


One of Telecom's most successful products has reached the end of its life cycle.

Telecom's head of online marketing, Chris Thompson, says JetStream Starter, the entry level high-speed internet service, is losing customers to newer broadband plans and will be turned off at the end of the year.

The change will mean Jetstart customers will have to upgrade to a new entry level plan or revert to much slower but cheaper dial-up internet accounts.

Those trading up from Jetstart ($64.90 from Xtra) to the new entry level Jetstream Surf ($49.95) will, on the face of it, save money.

But Jetstart came with unlimited local data traffic and five gigabytes of international traffic, so high users of local and international data will face higher charges.

"[Jetstream Starter] has been losing customers to JetStream Surf and ... it isn't true broadband, so to simplify things we're turning it off."

Thompson said he would also be looking at JetStream Home, introduced last September but almost immediately superseded by JetStream Surf, which has become Telecom's flagship broadband product.

"Home is a symmetrical service and that's really more suited to the business market. The home-user dynamic at the moment is for an asymmetrical service because people are downloading more than they're uploading."

JetStream Surf downloads to the PC at 256 kbps but uploads at only half that, 128 kbps.

Thompson is pleased with the uptake of JetStream Surf and said the price points for the three different products were attracting a lot of JetStream Starter and dial-up customers.

"JetStream Surf is only a few dollars more each week and that's proving very attractive."