Kordia buys Orcon

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willnz

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#13995 9-Jun-2007 20:43

UPDATE: It's official - Kordia has bought Orcon. There was a press conference earlier in the day, seems they've snapped it up for the bargain price of $24.3m.

So, as Juha wrote in the latest edition of his infamous weekly newsletter FryUp, Kordia is buying an ISP. What's everyones pick for who they'll buy?

Oh, and remember, this is a public forum, so any confidential information that anyone may have should remain confidential.

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#74137 9-Jun-2007 21:28

Slingshot?

willnz

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#74139 9-Jun-2007 21:30

Maybe, especially since they had that mysterious "seperation" a couple of weeks back....

wmoore

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#74140 9-Jun-2007 21:34

maybe FarmSide ?

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wmoore

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#74141 9-Jun-2007 21:36

wmoore: maybe FarmSide ?

OK so not farmside

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willnz

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#74142 9-Jun-2007 21:38

why not? baycity was mentioned in the article, and they own farmside...

grant_k

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#74143 9-Jun-2007 21:47

I'm picking that it will be BayCity Communications for three reasons:

1) One of Kordia's senior staff (I can't remember who it was now) recently left to join BayCity in a senior executive capacity.

2) BayCity have been reselling Kordia's Extend service for the past couple of years under their "Farmside" brand.

3) BayCity are also launching a VoIP service (similar to VFX) later in the year according to this story in the Herald:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10443831

It's high time that Kordia had their own ISP so as to better promote their Extend Wireless service. Telecom have done nothing to promote this service for the past couple of years after the initial excitement died down. A conflict of interest has arisen with Telecom being the only beneficiary of PROBE funding in most areas:

* Do they promote Xtra Wireless aggressively, collect the PROBE subsidy from the government and sign up customers onto the $59.95 per month service, and then have to pay Kordia a good chunk of the ongoing revenue?

* Or do they roll out ADSL to distant areas where they get sufficient enquiries about Xtra Wireless to justify the $10k or less to put in a Mini-DSLAM or two? In that case, they get to keep ALL the extra revenue.

It's a no-brainer from Telecom's perspective, which is a large part of the reason that Kordia Extend still has only 2000 customers signed up in almost 4 years since they launched the service.

The worst thing about the PROBE contracts was that Telecom scooped the pool for almost all of them leaving other resellers of Kordia's Extend service without any subsidy, and yet trying to compete against Xtra Wireless for the same small pool of customers. For this reason:

* Most Extend users are connected via Xtra Wireless
* The other Resellers such as ICONZ, Inspire, Farmside all have prices starting at around $100 per month whereas Xtra is $60 per month
* Xtra doesn't promote their Wireless service because there is much more margin in ADSL
* The other resellers don't promote the Extend service because their prices aren't competitive with Xtra

The whole situation is a mess, which happened because the government awarded the PROBE subsidies to Telecom instead of to Kordia, who could have then offered all their resellers an equal playing field. A right little cock-up has resulted and 90% of the capacity of Kordia's Extend network is lying idle.

Now that WxC has grabbed the bull by the horns and decided to bundle a VoIP service with Extend for $99 per month, suddenly the deal has become a lot more appealing to rural dwellers who can now ditch their Telecom landline and go totally wireless with a 5GB data cap and decent upload/download speeds.

The Xnet Xtend package is the best wireless deal on the table right now unless you are lucky enough to live in a Wired Country, Wireless Nation or CallPlus WiMax coverage area. Xtra Wireless only gives you 1GB of data for your $60 and charges 5c per MB if you exceed the cap, whereas WxC charge only 0.1c per MB i.e. 50 times less!

coffeebaron

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#74146 9-Jun-2007 22:53

I heard they are buying Vodafone - yes its true, really!

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hellonearthisman

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#74156 10-Jun-2007 00:51

www.inspire.net.nz

willnz

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#74158 10-Jun-2007 08:09

Maybe it's Xtra

GEOMAX

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#74163 10-Jun-2007 09:56

maybe World Exchange??? would fit in with selling VFX to rural customers very nicely

freitasm

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#74172 10-Jun-2007 12:17

Accroding to Juha's post Kordia is getting Orcon...

willnz

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#74173 10-Jun-2007 12:21

Certainly kept it very quiet then

GEOMAX

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#74179 10-Jun-2007 14:12

To transform Kordia into a silk purse from a sows ear they need a fairy godmother with expertise and a softswitch. Orcon with a new soft switch (news to me) is only half way there....

juha

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#74183 10-Jun-2007 14:45

I've eliminated a bunch of providers from the running... Orcon, ICONZ, BayCity, Snap, Compass and Eketahuna IPoverPigeons Ltd are the only ones left.

BayCity seems a natural in many ways, but why then did Kordia not buy it last year, and went for Ihug instead?

Talk about consolidation though.

Juha

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#74197 10-Jun-2007 19:44

They are getting ICONZ most prob....orcon is out of the question....seeby woodhouse is not selling it...

Do whatever you want to do man.

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