Local loop unbundling has finally made it south of the Bombay Hills.

Wellington-based Actrix has become the first ISP outside of Auckland to move its own DSL gear into a Telecom exchange.
Actrix Chief Executive George Reedy says his company has installed an NEC cabinet in Telecom’s Courtney Place exchange. The unbundled service will be available to the approximately 1100 Actrix customers located in the immediate vicinity of the exchange, says Reedy.

Plans based on the new unbundled service will be offered to central Wellington customers from mid October.

Working with Chorus, Actrix plans to install into other Wellington exchanges shortly, then for Actrix customers throughout the country over the next 12 to 18 months, Reedy says.

Actrix becomes the third ISP to enter Telecom’s DSL turf. Since June, Vodafone and Orcon have been shifting gear into Telecom exchanges around Auckland. Both say they’ll have around Auckland 40 exchanges by year’s end, and both plan to incrementally expand around the rest of the country during 2009. TelstraClear has no unbundled plans live at this point, but promises to offer plans from 72 exchanges later this year.