The Commerce Commission’s latest quarterly telco review finds Telecom losing broadband market share in the retail market.  But Telecom’s Chorus division is doing well – at least by regulatory standards - selling 12,000 unbundled lines to wholesale customers Actrix, Orcon and Vodafone.

Unbundling continued at a reasonable clip for the quarter ended September 30, the Telecommunications Key Statistics report finds, terming the service "very popular".

The trend is accelerating. Shortly after the report closed, Actrix became the first ISP outside Auckland to buy unbundled lines from Chorus, shifting its gear into the Courtney Place Exchange in Wellington. Meanwhile, Vodafone announced it has now moved its ADSL2+ gear into all 40 of the Auckland exchanges that have been unbundled by Chorus, with Orcon not far behind.

Telecom DSL market share slides
The Commission's report also notes that one third of DSL connections on Telecom’s network are now wholesale connections sold to retail customers.

But Telecom’s retail connections have been growing more slowly than the total DSL market. “This has resulted in Telecom’s share of the retail DSL market decreasing from 76% in June 2006 to 66% in September 2008,” the new Commission report says.

Broadband at dial-up prices (and nosebleed data caps)
The report notes that Telecom’s market share fluctuates quite dramatically, and that its latest dip “could be due to the end of its $16.95 ‘broadband at dial-up prices’ promotion and the high charge for extra data usage imposed on customers of the Basic broadband plan pushed in this promotion.

"The Commission notes that the data charges for extra data used on Telecom’s Basic plan are equivalent to around $20 a gigabyte compared to the $1 to $5 a gigabyte that other popular ISPs charge.”

The Commission notes that Telecom Broadband introduced plans with more generous data caps during October.

Revenue slide
Focussing on the quarter ending September 30, the Commission also finds Telecom revenue on the slide. It says Telecom’s core revenues fell by $6 million from last quarter to $799 million. While most of Telecom’s revenue categories were static or showed a small decline, mobile data revenue increased by $2 million to $58 million.