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Xtra (ISP)
Encyclopedia
Xtra Limited is New Zealand
's largest Internet service provider
(ISP). It was founded in 1996 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand
. Xtra has provided dial-up Internet access throughout New Zealand since its inception. In 1999 it created New Zealand's first ADSL
service.
The name Xtra was also used with the separate entity Yahoo!Xtra
, a joint venture
web portal
between Telecom (49% stake) and Yahoo!7
(51% stake) from 2007 to 2011. The venture was formed in December 2006 replacing the XtraMSN web portal and included additional features for Xtra broadband customers.
In 2008 Telecom dropped the Xtra brand name from products and services, using Telecom instead (Xtra broadband became Telecom broadband for example).
The company has breached the Fair Trading Act 1986
at least eight times between 2003 and 2010.
As a subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand, Xtra has retained some monopoly
of its parent company. To many people, this monopoly is regarded as an unfair advantage over other ISPs. Many lobbyists, including Slingshot
's CEO Annette Presley, have persuaded New Zealand's Communications Ministry to force the unbundling of Telecom's local loop
, so as to make fairer trading terms and lessen Xtra's ISP monopoly.
(ORBS) anti-spam blacklist, to remove them. ORBS was a blacklist of IP addresses relating to open mail relay
s like those run by Xtra, which enable spammers to send unsolicited bulk e-mail. Hundreds of organisations subscribed to the list, including Bigfoot.com and at least one other large free mail provider. They rejected e-mail from any IP address listed in ORBS. The court action led (indirectly) to the end of one of the oldest DNSBL
services.
The plan was eventually grandfathered, and in mid-2009 was succeeded by the Big Time plan, where Xtra openly informed users about traffic management. As of 30 October 2009, Telecom cancelled the Go Large broadband plan for all existing customers, offering alternative plan options such as the Big Time plan. On 20 May 2010 Telecom cancelled Big Time and was forcing customers to move back to a capped plan.
, a merger of Xtra's homepage xtra.co.nz with Microsoft New Zealand's msn.co.nz. Several other MSN services were cobranded with Xtra in the XtraMSN brand (e.g. Hotmail
). Several versions of capitalising XtraMSN were used by Telecom and Microsoft New Zealand
in their promotional literature.
In 2007 Xtra changed to Yahoo!
in Microsoft
's place. Their main portal was then Yahoo!Xtra
.
The move to Yahoo!Xtra Bubble caused trouble for many small business owners and website hosting companies in New Zealand. Yahoo's aggressive antispam policies caused business owners to lose bookings and caused major delays for some customers in receiving emails. The Dominion Post
brought the problem to the fore with an article on 26 November 2007, "Buck passed as mail binned". Responsibility for the trouble was shunned by Xtra who seemed unable to make any changes to Yahoo's antispam filtering system. Xtra pushed the blame back to the hosting companies: "Telecom spokesman Nick Brown denies there are technical problems with the service, and blames web-hosting companies for forwarding mail without filtering it first for spam." The problem with their denial was that Xtra/Yahoo's email system forwarded spam in the same manner.
Reports of Xtra's email troubles appeared on blogs, forums and newsletters as people realised that emails were not arriving. New Zealand Tourism Online's October 2007 newsletter reported that they "found several clients who have not been getting accommodation enquiry or booking emails due to the filter system."
One of Xtra's solutions to the problem was telling their users to add the sender of the email to their contacts list. This caused the email be redirected to the inbox, however the immediate deferral of email by Yahoo's email servers could cause delays of many hours. This was a problem that Xtra inherited by joining with Yahoo.
Yahoo denied that they use greylisting practices.
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
's largest Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
(ISP). It was founded in 1996 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand
Telecom New Zealand
Telecom New Zealand is a New Zealand-wide communications service provider , providing fixed line telephone services, a mobile network, an internet service provider , a major ICT provider to NZ businesses , and a wholesale network infrastructure provider to other NZ CSPs...
. Xtra has provided dial-up Internet access throughout New Zealand since its inception. In 1999 it created New Zealand's first ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
Asymmetric digital subscriber line is a type of digital subscriber line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilizing frequencies that are not used by a voice...
service.
The name Xtra was also used with the separate entity Yahoo!Xtra
Yahoo!Xtra
Yahoo!Xtra was a New Zealand web portal that existed under that name from 2007 to 2011. It was a joint venture between Yahoo!7 and Telecom New Zealand. Yahoo!7 held a 51 percent stake in the company and Telecom NZ held 49 percent. Because Yahoo!7 is a 50/50 venture, Yahoo! proper was therefore a...
, a joint venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
web portal
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
between Telecom (49% stake) and Yahoo!7
Yahoo!7
Yahoo!7 is a 50-50 partnership between the Seven Network and Yahoo! Inc. in Australia.As part of the Yahoo! Inc. and the Seven Media Group, Yahoo!7 brings together the online assets of Yahoo! Inc. and the television and magazine content of the Seven Network and Pacific Magazines...
(51% stake) from 2007 to 2011. The venture was formed in December 2006 replacing the XtraMSN web portal and included additional features for Xtra broadband customers.
In 2008 Telecom dropped the Xtra brand name from products and services, using Telecom instead (Xtra broadband became Telecom broadband for example).
The company has breached the Fair Trading Act 1986
Fair Trading Act 1986
The Fair Trading Act 1986 is a statute of New Zealand. Its purpose is to encourage competition and to protect consumers from misleading and deceptive conduct and unfair trade practices.The Fair Trading Act provides for consumer information standards....
at least eight times between 2003 and 2010.
Unfair trade
In 1999 Telecom created New Zealand's only ADSL service. Telecom later allowed other ISPs to access its ADSL networks (under increasing government and public pressure). It is widely believed that Telecom has provided unfair and monopolistic terms of trade regarding its wholesale ADSL services, and some claim that it continues to do so.As a subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand, Xtra has retained some monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
of its parent company. To many people, this monopoly is regarded as an unfair advantage over other ISPs. Many lobbyists, including Slingshot
Slingshot (ISP)
Slingshot is a New Zealand owned telecommunications company. Founded in 2001, it is one of the major internet service providers in New Zealand. Slingshot is a subsidiary of CallPlus Services Ltd, the majority of which is owned by Annette Presley and her ex-husband Malcolm Dick, with ex-CEO Martin...
's CEO Annette Presley, have persuaded New Zealand's Communications Ministry to force the unbundling of Telecom's local loop
Local loop unbundling
Local loop unbundling is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises...
, so as to make fairer trading terms and lessen Xtra's ISP monopoly.
ORBS
During 2001 Xtra and Actrix (another New Zealand Internet service provider) won a High Court injunction to force Alan Brown, the maintainer of the Open Relay Behavior-modification SystemOpen Relay Behavior-modification System
Open Relay Behavior-modification System , created and run by Alan Brown in New Zealand, was one of the first DNS-based Blackhole Lists , a means by which an internet domain may publish a list of IP addresses, in a database which can be easily queried automatically by other computer programs on the...
(ORBS) anti-spam blacklist, to remove them. ORBS was a blacklist of IP addresses relating to open mail relay
Open mail relay
An open mail relay is an SMTP server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to send e-mail through it, not just mail destined to or originating from known users...
s like those run by Xtra, which enable spammers to send unsolicited bulk e-mail. Hundreds of organisations subscribed to the list, including Bigfoot.com and at least one other large free mail provider. They rejected e-mail from any IP address listed in ORBS. The court action led (indirectly) to the end of one of the oldest DNSBL
DNSBL
A DNSBL is a list of IP addresses published through the Internet Domain Name Service either as a zone file that can be used by DNS server software, or as a live DNS zone that can be queried in real-time...
services.
Go Large Plan
Xtra's "Go Large" plan was introduced as New Zealand's first completely unlimited ADSL service in November 2006. There was much public criticism and disappointment at the instability and general slowness of the newly introduced plan. The plan was advertised with unlimited data usage and maximum speed. However, it was not clearly stated on advertisements that there was a fair use policy and traffic management that restricted users to a download limit between 4pm and 12am. If one were to continually exceed this limit, they would be placed in a "download pool", or contacted with offers to switch to another plan. This triggered a lot of media attention and an investigation was launched. By 22 February 2007, Telecom decided to refund all of its Go Large customers (approximately 60,000) with amounts of at least $130 per customer. This had been caused in part by the overwhelming complaints and criticisms Telecom Xtra had received due to under-delivering on the promises of the Go Large plan. It is speculated that the refund may have cost Telecom Xtra between NZ$7.5 and 8.5 million.The plan was eventually grandfathered, and in mid-2009 was succeeded by the Big Time plan, where Xtra openly informed users about traffic management. As of 30 October 2009, Telecom cancelled the Go Large broadband plan for all existing customers, offering alternative plan options such as the Big Time plan. On 20 May 2010 Telecom cancelled Big Time and was forcing customers to move back to a capped plan.
Web portals
XtraMSN was one of Xtra's trading names and was used as the branding for its default home page for customers. The name came from a deal between Xtra and MSNMSN
MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...
, a merger of Xtra's homepage xtra.co.nz with Microsoft New Zealand's msn.co.nz. Several other MSN services were cobranded with Xtra in the XtraMSN brand (e.g. Hotmail
Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as "HoTMaiL". It was one of the first...
). Several versions of capitalising XtraMSN were used by Telecom and Microsoft New Zealand
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in their promotional literature.
In 2007 Xtra changed to Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
in Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's place. Their main portal was then Yahoo!Xtra
Yahoo!Xtra
Yahoo!Xtra was a New Zealand web portal that existed under that name from 2007 to 2011. It was a joint venture between Yahoo!7 and Telecom New Zealand. Yahoo!7 held a 51 percent stake in the company and Telecom NZ held 49 percent. Because Yahoo!7 is a 50/50 venture, Yahoo! proper was therefore a...
.
Yahoo!Xtra Bubble problems
During the change from MSN to Yahoo, Telecom experienced much backlash over a change in email set up. Part of the agreement between Yahoo and Xtra provided that Xtra's email addresses be moved over to Yahoo servers in Australia. To access their Yahoo!Xtra Bubble email accounts, customers had to change advanced settings such as port numbers and authentication, in addition to basic settings such as mail server.The move to Yahoo!Xtra Bubble caused trouble for many small business owners and website hosting companies in New Zealand. Yahoo's aggressive antispam policies caused business owners to lose bookings and caused major delays for some customers in receiving emails. The Dominion Post
The Dominion Post (Wellington)
The Dominion Post is a metropolitan broadsheet newspaper published in Wellington, New Zealand, owned by the Australian Fairfax group, owners of The Age, Melbourne, and The Sydney Morning Herald.- Foundation :...
brought the problem to the fore with an article on 26 November 2007, "Buck passed as mail binned". Responsibility for the trouble was shunned by Xtra who seemed unable to make any changes to Yahoo's antispam filtering system. Xtra pushed the blame back to the hosting companies: "Telecom spokesman Nick Brown denies there are technical problems with the service, and blames web-hosting companies for forwarding mail without filtering it first for spam." The problem with their denial was that Xtra/Yahoo's email system forwarded spam in the same manner.
Reports of Xtra's email troubles appeared on blogs, forums and newsletters as people realised that emails were not arriving. New Zealand Tourism Online's October 2007 newsletter reported that they "found several clients who have not been getting accommodation enquiry or booking emails due to the filter system."
One of Xtra's solutions to the problem was telling their users to add the sender of the email to their contacts list. This caused the email be redirected to the inbox, however the immediate deferral of email by Yahoo's email servers could cause delays of many hours. This was a problem that Xtra inherited by joining with Yahoo.
Yahoo denied that they use greylisting practices.