TelstraClear targets Tauranga

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$50m voice, broadband and mobility play revealed

By Juha Saarinen | Auckland | Thursday, 20 July, 2006

Some 100,000 households and businesses in Tauranga will be targetted by TelstraClear for telephone and broadband service in 2007. The telco today announced that it intends to spend $50 million on building a wireless last mile service in the Bay of Plenty town.

Called "Unplugged", the wireless service provides a landline replacement. Customers will also have mobile telephony and broadband. The entire bundle will be delivered via 3G cellular broadband, understood to be Vodafone's WCDMA with its new upgrade from Nokia.

Although TelstraClear CEO Allan Freeth says the Unplugged service is capable of delivering so-called "Triple Play", Freeth describes this as voice, broadband and mobile services, rather than the usual voice, broadband and video services.

The company is currently scouting Tauranga for wireless base stations for the service, which will connect to TelstraClear's fibre backbone and be managed from Auckland. Unplugged will be sold by Tauranga retailers, but the format or pricing wasn't revealed in today's announcement.