Telecom to Offer Guaranteed Broadband Services

The ability for organisations to truly rely on the quality of service delivered by their telco provider could almost be here. A requirement stipulated under the Telecommunications Amendment Act that was passed last year, requires Telecom to provide broadband with performance guarantees.

This looks to be a positive step for the internet-based services such as IP telephony and hosted applications (e.g. Google Docs & Spreadsheets), which require these sort of performance guarantees to be seriously considered by most organisations as a viable alternative to more traditional service models.

There are however already fears that this could mean a significant price increase for the consumer, given that Telecom will need to vastly improve parts of its network to provide these performance guarantees. It is likely these sort of fears will be just one of agenda items to be discussed at a workshop hosted by the Commerce Commission later this month.