September 8, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Designed to capitalize on New Zealand's small business sector, major New Zealand phone, mobile and internet service provider Telecom (telecom.co.nz) has partnered with web host Verio (verio.com) to provide web hosting for Telecom's suite of services including domain registering and design.
According to a report from New Zealand newspaper The Dominion Post, Telecom is offering new plans for local businesses ranging from five gigabytes of hosting with 200 GBs of traffic per month for about $10 US to 40 GB sites with a terabyte of traffic for $60.
Verio announced in July it would strengthen its worldwide small and home business hosting solution offerings, beginning with the Japanese market through NTT Plala, (plala.or.jp) where it offered advanced security and user experience features at a variety of price points. A subsidiary of Japanese firm NTT (ntt.com), Verio will host Telecom customers' websites on in the US.
According to Telecom research, about half of small businesses in New Zealand have a website, allowing room for growth within the market.
Telecom also partnered with Australian registrar Melbourne IT (melbourneit.com.au) to offer New Zealand addresses for about $27 US per year.
Telecom is also offering Auckland, New Zealand-based project portfolio management firm Sentient Software's (sentientsoftware.co.nz) web design services.
Despite these improvements, however, Wellington-based web host iServe (iserve.co.nz) managing director Joy Cottle told The Dominion Post that Telecom's hosting plans are "extremely well priced" but lack features, and also worries that hosting sites in the US would increase New Zealand's reliance on the Southern Cross (southerncrosscables.com) cable, a transoceanic, optical fibre project connecting Australasia and North America. More demand would create a bottleneck, causing the sites to load slowly.
