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From: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4322858a28.html

Stuff.co.nz | Thursday, 13 December 2007

LATEST: Buying broadband connections without an accompanying phone line is now a step closer.

The Commerce Commission today issued its final determination on the price Telecom must sell wholesale broadband connections to its competitors.

The ruling on unbundled bitstream access should speed the uptake of "naked DSL" connections - those without a traditional phone service - and boost Web-based phone services such as Skype.

Since the draft UBA determination was published in August, the commission has added a third enhanced service, on top of a basic service, to those which Telecom must provide.

The new service is at 180 kilobits per second (kbps), and is added to the 40kbps and 90kbps enhanced services that were in the draft.

These speeds reflect the minimum guaranteed connection speed the customer experiences. The 180kbps plan should be sufficient for video streaming.

The addition of the new faster service follows submissions on the draft and a conference to discuss issues.

There have also been some price changes from the draft.

For customers buying a basic UBA service and who also have a traditional phone service, called a plain old telephone service or POTS, the price charged by Telecom will be $27.44 a month.

That is slightly cheaper than in the draft, while for 40kbps and 90kbps services to customers with POTS the commission has reduced prices by roughly $2 to $3 to about $33 and $41 respectively.

For customers getting so-called naked DSL, without POTS, there is also the cost of Telecom's local loop network.

The commission ended up setting the cost of the local loop at higher rates than it had initially intended, and as a result the cost of the without POTS services is higher than it was in the draft.

The basic UBA service to urban areas is up by about $3 to $47.28, and that to non-urban areas is up by about $4 to $64.07. For the 40kbps and 90kbps services the increase is between about 50c and $2.50.

In its decision today, the commission required Telecom to have the basic service delivered by July 8 next year, with the 40kbps and 90kbps enhanced services due by September 23.

The 180kbps service is to be implemented 90 days after the 40kbps and 90kbps services.

Telecom Wholesale spokeswoman Melanie Marshall today said company officials were working through the determination.

The key issue for Telecom was the timeframes for the deployment of the enhanced UBA services, she said.

They were challenging but the commitment from Telecom was to work to them.

Telecom Users Association (Tuanz) chief executive Ernie Newman said the decision and numbers in it were quite predictable.

The final determination was another major milestone in a huge work programme being carried out by the Commerce Commission, he said.

But New Zealand was still in "catch-up mode" with the work being done now bringing this country into the competitive environment that many other countries were at five to 10 years ago.

"We don't want to take our eye off the real ball, which is next generation telecommunications and fibre optic to customers' premises," he said.

Slingshot general manager Mark Callander said he was now waiting for the final determination on the other key component, backhaul costs – the connection from an exchange to the core network.

That was expected around February and would give more indication of what services could be offered.

For now that backhaul was fairly constrained, dictating to a considerable extent what services could be offered, Mr Callander said.

He was pleased to see the addition of a 180kbps UBA service, saying it was something Slingshot had been seeking and which opened the scope of services it could offer.

Offering services to customers who retained their POTS would be a challenge, as the $40-plus cost of the POTS line would, for example take the retail price for a 90kbps service to more than $100.

Customers without POTS in urban areas were more promising, while if those in non-urban areas had been waiting for broadband price decreases today's decision would not enable that to happen, Mr Callander said.

For the non-urban areas it would come down to alternative access technologies, such as wireless, and such initiatives were now under way.

Click here to read the Commerce Commission's release.

With NZPA