KEY POINTS:
TelstraClear is finally joining YahooXtra in the media portal market with a consumer-focused website that will see the country's second-largest telecommunications provider generate media content in-house for the first time.
The Clearnet beta portal launched today takes the name of the internet provider Telstra inherited when it bought Clear Communications in 2001.
TelstraClear will also keep alive the Paradise brand which has received minimal investment in recent years, vowing not to change its webmail interface or force customers to change their email address to Clearnet.
Clearnet will become the default location on the web for TelstraClear's 300,000 internet subscribers and those accessing webmail and feature news, MetService weather reports and maps and entertainment and gaming content designed to show what can be done with high-speed internet links.
Unlike Telecom, which partnered with Yahoo and subsequently outsourced management of its consumer email platform to the web giant, Clearnet has been created entirely in-house, at low cost.
"It is DIY, but hopefully it won't look DIY," said Luke Patterson, group marketing manager at TelstraClear.
"It's mainly cost us in people time. We could have spent millions going out to external agencies but we realised we didn't have to."
While TelstraClear had considered creating a local version of Australian parent Telstra's BigPond portal, the company instead used its staff to design everything from the portal's media player to the Clearnet branding.
"We had the skills internally anyway and all the rights BigPond have are focused on Australia, AFL football, that sort of thing," said Patterson.
Phase one of Clearnet will concentrate on a handful of categories, notably computer and video games, which TelstraClear has some experience of in the past through the hosting of Paradise multiplayer gaming servers. A deal with gaming server and forum host Deluxe, which has moved its game servers to TelstraClear's Albany data centre, will allow TelstraClear customers to access game servers to join games like CounterStrike without eating into their monthly data traffic allowance.
Formed three years ago and existing mainly on donations from gamers, Deluxe would benefit from lower operating costs through the deal.
"There are several gaming communities in the country, so it is tough to get to the top. It's a big step forward for us," said Deluxe director Lindsay Joyce, who declined to reveal how many gamers Deluxe currently has.
Patterson said that with 750,000 gamers in the country, it was a logical market to tap. "They're playing everything from SingStar to Grand Theft Auto IV."
Four people are working on the Clearnet portal which will mainly be filled with print and video content supplied from media partners like TV3, news agency NZPA, magazine publisher HB Media and MetService. But Clearnet would also feature content created internally, said Patterson.
A room in the company's North Shore headquarters has become a makeshift TV studio complete with green screen for creating digital backgrounds to TV segments. Interviews with celebrities and sports stars will be filmed for posting on the website.
Gaming fanatic Byron McLean was pulled from TelstraClear's call centre to become a fulltime editor for the portal. TelstraClear was considering buying online rights to play sports coverage.
"But we're not TV guys," Patterson was keen to point out. "We don't mean to be in direct competition with TVNZ or the Herald. We are a telco. We just want to show people what they can do with broadband."
TelstraClear's homemade content has ruffled the feathers of media players like TVNZ, which has said it will not feature ads for Clearnet on its website as it views it as a competitor.
Patterson said he had tried in vain to placate media companies with assurances that its ambitions in the content space were limited.
Phase two of Clearnet's development, scheduled for midyear, would revamp the webmail platform and add antivirus and spam filtering.
Later, TelstraClear would consider whether to offer movie downloads through Clearnet, as BigPond does across the Tasman.
"It's definitely on the radar, as are music downloads and online shopfronts," Patterson said.
"It's great to do all that but longer term, is it going to make money?"
TelstraClear would look to sell advertising on the portal as rivals YahooXtra and MSN.co.nz do, though Patterson didn't see it as a major revenue stream.
