From today New Zealanders have another great value option in the broadband space, with Telecom, soon to be Spark, announcing the launch of Naked Ultra Fibre. Naked Ultra Fibre plans allow customers to choose lightning fast fibre speeds without paying for a home phone package. The plans are available across both 30Mbps and 100Mbps fibre speeds, and prices start from just $55 (for 80GB a month at 30Mbps, when combined with an Ultra Mobile plan).

General Manager Home, Mobile and Business, Jason Paris, said that while the majority of Telecom’s customers still liked the ease and convenience of having a home phone, a growing proportion now rarely if ever used their landlines – instead relying on their mobiles and applications like Skype to keep in touch with friends and family.

“The popularity of our naked broadband product has been growing steadily amongst customers since we launched it late last year – so offering a superfast version is the logical next step.

“The landline continues to be popular of course, but a growing group of our customers tell us that the only calls they receive on their home phone are from people who are either trying to sell them something or asking about their political views. These customers are quite happy to stop chatting to telemarketers and political pollsters if it means they can save a few dollars each month.”

Mr Paris said the business had seen a growing momentum in fibre sales over the past few months, with the best week of sales ever in the past week.

“Ultra Fibre customers tell us that once they’ve experienced life online with fibre, they could never go back to their old broadband plan – it is that much better. This is particularly the case when it comes to data hungry applications like gaming or video.”

Last month Google released a report that showed Telecom Ultra Fibre is “HD Verified” across New Zealand.1 In the same month, Telecom announced that it is now offering its Ultra Fibre product in more New Zealand locations than any other ISP.

Mr Paris said that Ultra Fibre Naked plans would be available to Telecom customers anywhere that fibre is available. Customers can sign up to the standalone product, or can choose to combine the Ultra Fibre Naked with a Telecom Ultra Mobile plan (any plan $39 and above), which will give them an additional $20 discount.

More information on Naked Ultra Fibre may be found at www.telecom.co.nz/shop/internet/ultrafibre/