Xtra (ISP)
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Xtra Limited (trading as Xtra), a subdivision of Telecom New Zealand, is New Zealand's largest Internet service provider. Xtra offers various internet services including ADSL and dial-up connections within New Zealand and has been doing so since its inception in the early 1990's.
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[edit] Xtra Broadband Refund
As of 22 February 2007, Telecom had been forced to refund all of it's Go Large customers (approximately 60,000) starting from $130 per customer. This has been caused by the overwhelming complaints and criticisms Telecom Xtra has received due to their lack of action, over hyped promises and under-delivering of the Go Large plan. Customers who have been on the Go Large plan since 8 December 2006 until present, are entitled to $130-$160 credit refund. Those who have stayed in Go Large since earlier than 8 December may be entitled for more. The refund may cost Telecom Xtra up to 7.5 - 8.5 million NZ dollars.
The credit refund is to be processed in customers' bills in March and April.
Also, in addition to refunding customers, Telecom Xtra may also have to refund other smaller NZ ISPs as a result of manipulation and overpricing of wholesale prices set by Telecom for other ISPs to purchase. This refund may set Telecom Xtra back by 800,000 NZ dollars. This proposal is being considered by the Commerce Commission of New Zealand.
[edit] The largest ISP
As a subdivision of Telecom New Zealand, Xtra has retained some monopoly of its parent company. To many people, this monopoly is widely regarded as an unfair advantage over other ISPs. Many lobbyists, including Slingshot's CEO Annette Presley have persuaded New Zealand's Communications Ministry to force the unbundling of Telecom's local loop, so as to fairer trading terms and lessen Xtra's ISP monopoly. Although the LLU (Local loop unbundling) has not yet been completed, it is projected to be sometime mid 2007.
[edit] Xtra services
From the time of Xtra's inception, Xtra has been providing dial-up internet throughout New Zealand. In 1999 Telecom created New Zealand's only ADSL service. Telecom later allowed other ISP's to access its ADSL networks (under increasing government and public pressure). Today, it is widely accepted that Telecom has provided and still is providing unfair and monopolistic terms of trade regarding its wholesale ADSL services[1].
Xtra's "Go Large" plan was introduced as New Zealand's first completely unlimited ADSL service in 2006, however there has been much public criticism and disappointment at the appalling instability and general slowness of the newly introduced plan.[2] The Go Large Plan was advertised with unlimited data usage and maximum speed. What was not clearly stated on advertisements, however, was that there was a fair use policy and traffic management that restricted users to a download limit between 4pm and 12am. If one were to continually exceed this limit, they would be placed in a "download pool", or contacted with offers to switch to another plan [3][4].
[edit] XtraMSN/Yahoo!Xtra
XtraMSN was one of the trading names of Telecom New Zealand's ISP Xtra, and was used as the branding for its default home page for customers. The present name came from a deal between Xtra and MSN, a merger of Xtra's homepage xtra.co.nz with Microsoft New Zealand's msn.co.nz.
Several other MSN services besides the portal awere cobranded with Xtra in the XtraMSN brand (e.g. Hotmail). Several versions of capitalising XtraMSN have been used by Telecom and Microsoft New Zealand in their promotional literature.
Xtra has changed to Yahoo in Microsoft's place; Australian Yahoo![5]. Their main portal is now yahooxtra.co.nz
[edit] ORBS
During 2001 Xtra and Actrix (New Zealand Internet Service Providers) won a High Court injunction to get themselves off the ORBS anti-spam blacklist operated by Alan Brown. ORBS (Open Relay Behaviour-modification System) had been a blacklist of IP addresses relating to open smtp relays, which can be abused by spammers to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. Hundreds of organisations subscribe to the list, including Bigfoot.com and at least one other large free mail provider. They reject e-mail from from any IP address listed in ORBS. [1] [2].
