Paul Clearwater - Monday, 10 December 2007
Since
launching its broadband and fixed-line offerings in September, national
electricity retailer TrustPower has experienced modest growth, but it is looking
forward to bigger things when it launches its offering
nationally.
The
power company has taken a cautious approach to rolling out its
telecommunications services to customers with a soft launch in Tauranga. It
plans to roll out its offering to its entire 200,000 odd customer base however,
in January 2008. The company is reselling Telecom's voice products and Maxnet's
broadband products through its virtual ISP offering.
The
company bought Oamaru-based CallSouth in March and also bought Bay of
Plenty-based tolls company Kinect last
year. With
CallSouth's 16,000 customer base, TrustPower has added an extra 6,000 Tauranga
customers to its ‘Kinect' telecommunications service. Retail division manager
Chris O'Hara says he is "satisfied" with the numbers so far. The company did not
want to go for the "big bang" approach by offering the Kinect product to all
customers because there was a lot of back-end technology such as billing
platforms to integrate, says O'Hara.
The
company has also been constrained by provisioning boundaries, but O'Hara says
they are "pretty much there now" and they will "accelerate the rollout" of
products in the new year with telesales and direct mail marketing. Asked
how many customers TrustPower hopes to cross over to the Kinect product, O'Hara
says realistically they hope to have around 100,000 customers on board by this
time next year. He admits that margins are not that strong for reselling
telecommunications services, but the offering is part of its overall business
strategy, including customer retention.Interestingly,
the company will be retailing electricity to Wellingtonians in the new year with
a long term option of offering the Kinect product.
