Xtra (ISP)
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 1996 Incorporated 14 June 2001 |
| Headquarters | Level 8 North Tower Telecom House 68 - 86 Jervois Quay Wellington |
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Key people
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Craig Mulholland, Director Roderick Snodgrass, Director |
| Products | Internet service provider |
| Website | www.telecom.co.nz |
Xtra Limited (now branded as part of Spark New Zealand) is New Zealand's largest Internet service provider (ISP). It was founded in 1996 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Spark New Zealand (formerly Telecom New Zealand). Xtra has provided dial-up Internet access throughout New Zealand since its inception in May 1996. In 1999 it created New Zealand's first ADSL service.
The name Xtra was also used with the separate entity Yahoo!Xtra, a joint venture web portal between Telecom (49% stake) and Yahoo!7 (51% stake) from 2007 to 2011. The venture was formed in December 2006 replacing the XtraMSN web portal and included additional features for Xtra broadband customers.
In 2008 Telecom dropped the Xtra brand name from products and services, using Telecom instead (Xtra broadband became Telecom broadband for example).
In 1999 Telecom created New Zealand's only ADSL service. Telecom later allowed other ISPs to access its ADSL networks (under increasing government and public pressure), although some claimed that Telecom provided unfair and monopolistic terms of trade regarding its wholesale ADSL services.
As a subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand, Xtra retained some of the monopoly that its parent company formerly had. To many people, this monopoly was regarded as an unfair advantage over other ISPs. Many lobbyists, including Slingshot's CEO Annette Presley, persuaded New Zealand's Communications Ministry to force the unbundling of Telecom's local loop, so as to make fairer trading terms and lessen Xtra's ISP monopoly. The company has breached the Fair Trading Act 1986 at least eight times between 2003 and 2010.
During 2001 Xtra and Actrix (another New Zealand Internet service provider) won a High Court injunction to force Alan Brown, the maintainer of the Open Relay Behavior-modification System (ORBS) anti-spam blacklist, to remove them from the list. ORBS was a blacklist of IP addresses relating to open mail relays like those run by Xtra, which enable spammers to send unsolicited bulk e-mail. Hundreds of organisations subscribed to the list, including Bigfoot.com and at least one other large free mail provider. They rejected e-mail from any IP address listed in ORBS. The court action led (indirectly) to the end of one of the oldest DNSBL services.
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Wikipedia