Telecom New Zealand says its wholesale 1Mbits/s and 2Mbits/s unbundled bitstream service (UBS) plans are on track for a March launch. Trials will commence in early March with selected ISPs, with a full launch planned for later in the month.

General manager of TCNZ's Wholesale Services Tim Lusk said the new services are demanding significant technical development but Telecom is confident that services would be delivered next month. "These plans have been developed with the aim of meeting the Commerce Commission’s specification of an Internet grade service of 128kbits/s upstream"' Mr Lusk said. "In order to ensure a competitive environment and a level playing field for the provision of an Internet grade service for all service providers, Telecom will harmonise the upload speed of comparable retail plans to 128kbits/s upstream from 24 March 2005 for new connections. This will ensure comparability of our retail offering and our wholesale UBS offering".

"As we reported when we released our half-yearly results early this month, we’re getting strong demand from other carriers for our UBS products. We made nearly 50,000 new broadband connections in the last quarter of 2004 and about 14% were UBS plans" Lusk added.

TCNZ will also introduce split billing of wholesale JetStream from next month. This will allow service providers to choose to provide only ISP services, without needing to take an end-customer’s full range of services such as line rental and calling in order to offer wholesale JetStream.

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