TOP STORY: Discount for power phone and internet

Cut-price home phone calls and internet will be offered to 60,000 Bay people as electricity giant TrustPower enters the fast-moving telecommunications market.
Tauranga-based TrustPower, the country's fifth largest energy company, is introducing Kinnect, which will allow customers to make domestic and overseas toll calls and access dial-up and broadband internet at competitive prices.
The company will buy the telecommunications services from wholesalers and customers will receive just one bill for their electricity, home phone calls and even internet usage - at an overall discounted rate of up to 20 per cent for all three products.
TrustPower, which operates nationwide, will early next year offer the deal to all its 220,000 customers, of which 60,000 are in the Western Bay.
It hopes a total of 40,000 customers will take up the offer, putting it in the country's five biggest telcos.
TrustPower division manager retail Chris O'Hara told the Bay of Plenty Times: "It's a logical extension of what we do. We already have the infrastructure and capability such as a call centre and billing system and we don't need to make the same capital investment as someone starting from scratch.
"We might be a new player (in the telecommunications market) and it might not be sticking to the knitting but it's a tight fit. It's a very dynamic sector and we are fast learners.
"We are not fiddling about; we are pretty serious; we think we are smart enough to take advantage of the change."
Ernie Newman, chief executive of Telecommunications Users Association, said TrustPower would bring a new dimension and some value to the market - "I'm sure they will find a viable business there."
He said it was only a matter of time before power companies became a force in telecommunications - it was a worldwide trend because they have the ability to transfer their engineering and skills.
Power companies also brought a different mentality to the market - they were concerned about transporting traditional phone calls, not charging against everything that flew across the line.
Under the new TrustPower service, the home phone number and line rental will be re-assigned to the Kinnect service.
Telecom, which owns the phone lines, will bill TrustPower for the carriage of voice and internet data.
The wholesaler will capture all the phone calls (length of conversation and destination) and internet connections, and provide that information to TrustPower. The Tauranga company will then make up invoices for their customers and also handle their inquiries.
TrustPower will be taking on five more staff to manage the Kinnect service, which will compete against Telecom, TelstraClear, ihug, CallPlus, World Exchange, Compass Communication, Orcon and others.
For the past three years TrustPower had an arrangement with the country's third biggest telco, ihug, which provided phone and internet services to 2500 TrustPower customers.
TrustPower, believing it was an additional service to retain its customers in a fiercely competitive market, made up the one-stop bill for ihug but that agreement ended earlier this year.
The ihug company, which has 80,000 phone and internet customers, was put up for sale and TrustPower made an unsuccessful bid. It then decided to go alone.
"We always felt there was an opportunity to be in the telecommunications space,"Mr O'Hara said. "We are another utility and it's not dissimilar to electricity or gas.
The Kinnect service is first being offered to the TrustPower customers who used ihug - initially it's only for phone calls and there will be a monthly discount on their power and tolls bill.
Mr O'Hara said the internet service will be provided within three to six months - by then TrustPower will be launching Kinnect nationwide.
It is unclear which internet service providers will be involved with the programme.
"By bundling the products we can offer a credit on top of the Friends programme that provides a 4-5 per cent discount on power," he said.
The Kinnect service will only be available to TrustPower customers but Mr O'Hara said: "we will go further afield if it proves successful."