Spark late with Gigatown plans; slashes pricing in meantime

There's good news and bad news for Spark customers in Dunedin, the winner of Chorus' Gigatown competition.

The bad: Spark won't make the March deadline to launch a low 1000 megabit per second (or "1 gig") plan. (Cheap one gig plans for residents being the main prize for the winning Gigatown. Dunedin also receives $500,000 community grant, a $200,000 innovation grant.)

Spark's one gig plans won't be available until mid-year. The company didn't immediately detail a reason for the delay*, but it has previously said it prefers to wait for for the pan-company Telecommunications Carriers Forum to settle on nationwide standards before it rolls out one gig service. 

The good: To ease the pain, Spark is offering cut-price 100 Mbit/s UFB fibre plans (see table below). Once the official Spark Gigatown plans are launched, these 100 Mbit/s promo plans will be upgraded to 1000Mbit/s and the previously advertised Gigatown pricing will kick in.

Spark has around 50% of the retail broadband market. 

At its half-year result earlier this week, the company said it had 21,000 UFB customers, or around 32% of total UFB connections. Shareholders won't necessarily be disappointed with that sluggish uptake because of technical complications that mean, for now, Spark has to stretch to the expense of maintaining a fibre customers old copper line for voice calls.

How others are pricing Gigatown plans
Orcon was one of the first to put a cost on a one gig plan: $85 per month with a 100GB data cap and $95 a month with unlimited data. Business plans will cost between $100 and $135, with $10 extra for a static IP address, one line included and $35 for each additional line.

That's pretty keen pricing. Primo Wireless — one of a handful of small ISPs that are so far offering commercial 1 gig residential service up in Taranaki — is charging $109/month with a 50GB data cap, $119 for 100GB, $129 for 250GB, $149 for 500GB and $169 for 1000GB (unlimited for all intents and purposes).

Yet although the tech savvy and industry insiders will think Orcon's $95 for one gig unlimited a great price — and it is — the fact is most residents of the winning Gigatown will be paying around $70 to $75 for their broadband at the moment. Upping that to close to $100 might not feel like winning a competition.

ABOVE: Spark's Gigatown pricing update. You do have to live in a part of Dunedin that's covered by the UFB. Chorus' rollout is still in progress around the city; check Chorus' website for the status of your street.

Orcon says it will also throw in a Roku 3 streaming devices worth $150 — a Roku 3 being a gadget that makes it easy to get a broadband-delivered movie and TV service like Netflix playing on your regular television. That should be fine, as long as residents of the winning Gigatown double-bolt their doors against Sky TV lawyers.

MyRepublic, the first ISP to reveal Gigatown pricing, says it will upgrade its 100Mbit/s residential plans, Pure ($99) and Gamer $109) to 1 gigabit/s for residents of the winning town. Both plans offer unlimited data. Snap has also weighed in with $99 and $119 unlimited plans.

Locally owned and operated Dunedin ISP Wicked Networks also announced this evening that "we will immediately upgrade all UFB ports within its customer access network to gigabit capability."  Wicked Networks principal Stu Fleming says his company will charge $150 a month for residential and $180/month (ex GST for) business.

"We feel that those numbers more accurately reflect the costs of delivery ex-Dunedin.  We've been in that space for 10 years now and understand the community," Mr Flemming told NBR.

"Having said that, mass-market residential isn't our primary market.  We know from the strength of our involvement with local entrepreneurs and startups that the innovative communities and being agile ourselves are the most important."

Vodfone's Gigatown plans are still in the works, though the company notes it already offers 200Mbit/s plans in Dunedin.

That's plenty.

Again, I'm a big proponent of the UFB, for everything from cloud computing in business to new competiton in video streaming at home, right up to 15Mbit/s-gobbling 4K TV. But I'm struggling to see why any business or home needs more than 100Mbit/s.

ckeall@nbr.co.nz

Follow @ChrisKeall

* A spokeswoman told NBR: "Our top priority is that our customers have the best experience possible using gigabit speeds on Spark’s Fibre Network from day one. It’s quite a complex process and we want to ensure its right before we launch so in recognition of the delay we’re offering residents these exclusive discounts on our fastest Ultra Fibre plans."