Ihug

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The correct title of this article is ihug. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

ihug Limited

Type	Subsidiary
Founded	Auckland, New Zealand (1994)
Headquarters	Auckland, New Zealand
Employees	100
Slogan	Connect Better
Website	www.ihug.co.nz

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Vodafone New Zealand buys Internet provider ihug

ihug is New Zealand's third largest ISP (behind Xtra and TelstraClear), and is owned by Vodafone New Zealand (New Zealand's largest mobile phone operator). According to 2005 estimates, it has over 100,000 internet and phone subscribers. Before 2000 Ihug was New Zealand's largest ISP but with other ISPs offering flat rate services many customers opted to join other ISPs (mainly Xtra).

Ihug originally stood for Internet Home Users Group, even though the name is seldom used. It was also known as The Internet Group or 'TIG' in Australia. Ihug was sold to iiNet in 2003 before being sold to Vodafone in 2006 after interest from then Television New Zealand subsidiary THL and competitor Orcon 1. Its headquarters are in Auckland, New Zealand. The current CEO is Mark Rushworth.

The company also ran a small subscription television service in Auckland for a while.

[edit] History

1994: Ihug was started by brothers Nick Wood and Tim Wood operating out of a garage.
1995: Ihug was the first company to introduce the flat rate internet.
1997: Ihug begins trading in Australia.
- Ihug purchases Dunedin-based ES Net, establishing a South Island customer base.
- IHUG establishes SatNet and Ultra satellite broadband services.
1998: Over 4500 websites on the ihug homepages' server were deleted after the machine was hacked. [1]
1999: Then owners Nick and Tim Wood were listed on the NBR Rich List.
2003: Ihug merges with iiNet.
2005: Ihug offloads satellite infrastructure to concentrate on ADSL broadband.
2006: Ihug sold to Vodafone (NZ operations only). [2]

[edit] Criticism

During the late nineties and early 2000's Ihug was critised for very slow connection speeds on dial-up, this was a result of the popularity of their flat-rate service. During busy times customers could expect to see download speeds of less than 1kb per second and sometimes couldn't connect due to overloading on the phone lines.