Xtra (ISP)

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Xtra Limited (trading as Xtra) is New Zealand's largest Internet service provider. It is a division of Telecom New Zealand.

Some of Xtra's competitors claim that this relationship gives Xtra an unfair advantage over its competitors. In particular, Telecom NZ offers an ADSL service which is supposed to be available on equal wholesale terms to all ISPs, but some claim that Xtra continues to enjoy preferential treatment with its ADSL offerings, especially when it comes to time-frames given for connecting new customers.

1 Criticism
2 Xtra MSN
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Criticism

See also: Broadband Internet access worldwide#New_Zealand

Despite being New Zealand's largest ISP, Xtra repeatedly ranks lowest in surveys performed by the Consumers' Institute of New Zealand. Its broadband offerings are also widely considered to compare badly with prices and performances found in other developed nations, or other ISP's within the country. There has been recent political activism calling for regulation against Telecom NZ for not meeting promises for improvement and for not providing NZ's internet broadband needs. After being pressured from the Government, Xtra released new packages advertising "faster, cheaper internet". The buyer should also note that the comma between "faster" and "cheaper" means they offer "faster" or "cheaper" internet, but not both.

[edit] Xtra MSN

XtraMSN is one of the trading names of Telecom New Zealand's ISP Xtra, used as the branding for its default home page for customers. The present name came from a deal between Xtra and MSN, and a merger of Xtra's homepage xtra.co.nz with Microsoft New Zealand's msn.co.nz default Internet Explorer home page in 2002.^[1] It is the default Windows Internet Explorer homepage in New Zealand.

Several other MSN services besides the portal are cobranded with Xtra in the XtraMSN brand (eg Hotmail). There are several versions of capitalising XtraMSN have been used by Telecom and Microsoft New Zealand in their promotional literature.