BayCity Extends Rural Community Broadband Offering

BayCity Extends Rural Community Broadband Offering Through WBS

BayCity New Zealand has signed a new Wholesale Broadband Solution (WBS) agreement with Telecom to extend the broadband services it offers to rural New Zealand.

Telecom Wholesale launched WBS in September with 14 new plans, which enable ISPs to access the Internet via Telecom’s Global Gateway Internet Service. BayCity is the 17th service provider to sign up for WBS.

BayCity Managing Director Barry Payne said the signing of the WBS agreement would support the launch of BayCity’s new broadband package Farmside Community Broadband, developed to meet the needs of rural communities.

“We understand that for people living in rural or remote areas, being connected to their community is very important - and many farmers are still looking for tangible ways they can benefit from broadband,” Mr Payne said.

“By packaging the Farmside service with useful content such as links, free software, applications, and community directories accessed by a community portal, we’ve bridged that gap.”

Telecom Head of Wholesale Marketing Chris Dyhrberg welcomed the agreement.

“We look forward to working closely with BayCity to ensure that they get the best out of these plans,” Mr Dyhrberg said.

“We offer WBS as it is important to Telecom to offer a range of broadband products into the wholesale market – to suit the range of ISPs that are operating in the market.

“Customers on WBS services will only have a relationship with their ISP. We believe this is a better experience for the customer than being on a resale plan, where the internet access is with Telecom and the ISP services with the ISP.”

“The initial WBS offering is the first in what will become a suite of wholesale broadband services that will offer a range of add on features for service providers”, Mr Dyhrberg said.

BayCity and Telecom have undertaken a number of joint projects together in recent years. These include selling Telecom 027 mobiles and broadband direct to rural New Zealand, and developing remote monitoring systems to provide farmers with real-time information on their farm vats, irrigation systems, pumps and weather conditions.

ENDS

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