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Xmas offers extend to home broadband
Tue, 3rd Nov 2009
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Telecom is set to spread some Christmas cheer to its home broadband customers as the silly season pricing war starts to heat up.

Telecom announced yesterday that it will allow all its home broadband customers to upload whatever they want over the Christmas period without affecting their monthly data allowance.

The move is driven by the rapid growth in photo-sharing sites and social media, and “a bit of Christmas spirit”, says Telecom’s Director of Home Ralph Brayham.

“Postcards, Christmas cards, holiday snaps and videos: the great Kiwi Christmas holiday is all about sharing experiences with family and friends,” he says. “Letting New Zealanders upload content online for free is our way of recognizing and encouraging the modern equivalent of that great tradition.”

The offer starts now and will last until the end of January. Downloading data still counts towards the monthly data allowance.

This follows on from last week’s tit-for-tat pricing offers in the mobile market, with both Telecom and Vodafone kicking off the festive season with a bang.

Vodafone started off silly season by seriously cutting back on their iPhone prices, offering a iPhone 3G 8GB handset for ‘free’ when signing up for a 24-month $130 a month plan. The handset previously cost $199 on the same plan. Vodafone also hacked $200 off the price of all iPhone models when accompanied by a 24-month contract.

Telecom replied with the aggressive move of offering ‘all-you-can-eat’ texting, whereby Telecom XT customers can text as much as they liked to any network for just $12 per month.

This offer also coincided with a Telecom prepay mobile broadband offer, priced at $99. Prepaid Mobile Broadband customers receive a T-Stick (MF626), a free XT SIM card and 500 megabytes (MB) of data free for use within the calendar month. The T-stick can then be “topped up” like a prepaid mobile phone.

Last Friday, Vodafone stepped up the Christmas fun a notch further,announcing both on-account and prepay mobile customers could call any Vodafone mobile, national landline, or landlines in 30 popular countries and talk for 2 hours for no more than $2.

Vodafone also released a prepay mobile broadband offer, priced at $99. The offer includes a high-speed Vodem Stick and free SIM. It comes loaded with one month credit to purchase a 512MB bundle

2Degrees also told ConnectMe that they would be releasing their Christmas promotions in the next 30 days.