From New Zealand Connections

Slingshot is a 100% New Zealand owned telecommunications company. Founded in 2001 [1], it is one of the major internet service providers in New Zealand. Slingshot is a subsidiary of CallPlus Services Ltd, the majority of which is owned by Annette Presley and her ex-husband Malcolm Dick, with CEO Martin Wylie holding a ten percent stake and a few others making up the rest.

Contents 1 Background 2 Criticism 3 Services provided by Slingshot 4 Plans available 5 Contacting Slingshot 6 External links

Background

Along with other Slingshot CEO, Annette Presley has been one of the leading figures in criticising Telecom. In 2000, before Slingshot, CallPlus provided free dialup Internet access in the forum of i4free they had over 150,000 subscribers.

Slingshot has been trialling WiMax in Whangarei (October 2006). However, as updates on this trial has been few and far between, it seems that they have now stopped this.

In December 2007, CallPlus, with it's subsidiary, Blue Reach, won the auction for the radio spectrum 2660-2690Mhz for $500,000 This is what they plan to roll-out their WiMax network on.

Slingshot has launched a significantly large data for referrals program, what could be considered a New Zealand first with one terrabyte worth of data which expires over a 12 month period. Other providers such as WorldxChange provide a credit for successful referrals. (Geekzone forum discussion)

Criticism

• Slingshot has come under fire for its aggressive use of overseas outsourced outbound Telemarketers, who appear to 'wardial' numbers at random in order to pitch a sale. In some instances, these telemarketers have been known to call the same number multiple times. [2] [3] [4]

• Other complaints have included excessively slow browsing speed, while other providers internet connections remain intact. [5]

• Additionally, a lot of criticism was laid at the feet of Slingshot, Orcon and Vodafone due to their opposition to Telecoms 1.4 billion dollar investment which would upgrade aspects of the network, bringing more cabinets to improve New Zealand broadband.[6] This was despite reports over a long duration stating that this was what was planned. [7] [8] [9]

• 24 January 2008 - A blog post detailing slingshots response time to email support - 12 days to acknowledge that another team were to look into the case. (Cokemaster blog article)

• 28 January 2008 - Slingshot came under fire upon an article which covered the purchase of equipment that would allow for traffic management. Traffic management was first exposed to New Zealanders when the Xtra Go Large plan was launched. Slingshot management later denied the intent to 'manage' traffic, except to state that certain traffic such as VoIP and web browsing would be given priority. (Stuff news article, Cokemasters blog article, Cokemasters second article, Mauricio Freitas's blog article, Geekzone thread).

Services provided by Slingshot

• Slingshot ADSL
• Slingshot Phone services
• Slingshot Dial-up
• Slingshot Naked DSL
• Slingshot iTalk VoIP
• Slingshot User Forum
• Slingshot iTalk forum

Plans available

• View Phone + Internet Packages by Slingshot

• View ADSL Broadband plans by Slingshot
• View Naked DSL plans by Slingshot
• View Dial-up plans by Slingshot

• View Fixed Line Phone plans by Slingshot
• View Capped Calling plans by Slingshot
• View VoIP plans by Slingshot

Contacting Slingshot

Contact details for Slingshot can be found here.

External links

• Slingshot homepage
• Slingshot Forum