Although it launched retail plains for its ISP Xtra, Telecom has not made equivalent Unbundled Bitstream Service (UBS) available for wholesalers. Instead, Telecom wrote to ISPs before it launched the Xtra retail and WBS plans, asking them if they would take up a new UBS deal with cheaper and faster service instead of seeking a regulated service.

In addition, the new plans are unlikely to deliver the promised speeds, says one ISP.

Inspire Net managing director James Watts says that while the 3.5Mbit/s plan with 512kbit/s upstream could work well for many people, it is severely limited by the low committed information rate (CIR) of 24kbit/s per user. This, Watts says, is slower than modem speeds and with an up to 85:1 contention ratio (number of users sharing the network bandwidth), Telecom's DSL platform won't support streaming media during peak hours, such as the live coverage of the ASB Tennis Open recently.

ISPs Computerworld has spoken to report many customer enquiries for the faster and cheaper plans already. As providers do not have wholesale plans yet, they are concerned that Xtra will take customers from them.

Adding to the pressure, Telecom says in the letter to ISPs that it wants broad acceptance of the proposal to go ahead with a formal offer. If that condition is met, four new UBS plans will be ready from April 1 to coincide with Xtra's retail ones. Should just one wholesale ISP indicates that it will seek a regulatory service instead, Telecom will reassess its position according to the letter and not put an offer on the table.