Ihug hoping to loosen Telecom grip

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Ihug plans to beef up its satellite-based Ultra broadband internet connection to a two-way wireless service, removing the need for a Telecom telephone line.

The Ultra service now has high speed wireless downloads, but uploads go through a phone line.

If the plan succeeds, the company believes the service will help close the rural "digital divide" and will loosen Telecom's grip on "local loop" telephone lines to New Zealand homes.

"We believe it's the Holy Grail that we've been searching for ever since we started our satellite service four years ago," said managing director Nick Wood.

Details of the new service are sketchy, but the new two-way Ultra service will offer an upstream speed of up to 512 kilobits per second. This alone will be a big improvement on both the terrestrial and satellite-based versions of Ultra, which rely on slow dial-up connections delivering 56 kbps at best for the uplink.

Ihug has also yet to select its main equipment manufacturer - it is negotiating with three possible suppliers - but the two-way service will be available to users of the existing satellite and terrestrial-based services, who will not have to replace their respective 90cm or 45cm dishes.

Mr Wood said the service would be delivered by a standalone "black box" which will contain an amplifier to transmit the upstream signal.

Ihug is also planning to offer internet protocol telephony, but Mr Wood admits further testing is necessary to be sure this will work on the satellite service.

"We are 100 per cent sure we can offer this on the terrestrial service and we are pretty sure we can do it via satellite."

The problem is latency or transmission delays.

On the terrestrial service, the latency of less than 100 milliseconds is well within acceptable limits, but the half second delay caused by the round trip to a satellite in geo-stationary orbit above the earth may not be acceptable.

With a unified messaging system, which will enable voice mail messages to be stored in a similar format to emails and allow advanced functions such as sending voice mail as email.

"It will offer everything you would expect and more - 2001 is going to be the year that the internet will become much more useful."

Ihug is a long way from deciding on the price it will charge for the new service, but it would be launched in three to five months at "an affordable price in the usual ihug style," said Mr Wood.