Voyager Internet First Kiwi ISP to Respond to Rising Costs
Voyager Internet is responding to rising third-party costs and inflation by making changes to their residential broadband and voice offerings and pricing. Many other NZ internet providers are expected to announce comparable price increases in the coming weeks.
New Zealand’s retail ISPs are provided with the “last mile” fibre wholesale access to peoples’ homes by the Local Fibre Companies (LFCs): Chorus, Enable, Northpower and Tuatahi Fibre. Each year, the LFCs increase their prices according to the Consumer Price Index. With inflation hitting record numbers this year, wholesale costs to retail internet providers have risen at the fastest rate ever.
Voyager has absorbed all supplier price increases for the past 5+ years but can no longer continue to do so.
Effective 1 July 2022, Voyager will offer a simplified range of open-term only residential broadband and VoIP services at standardised pricing. Previously, discounts were offered for 12-month term contracts. Now, all plans will now be open-term, priced at the existing open-term rate; no 12-month terms will be offered. All broadband plans will continue to provide unlimited data.
“Voyager’s goal has been to deliver an excellent customer experience and value for money” says Seeby Woodhouse, Voyager Founder. “Over Voyager’s lifetime, we have done everything we could to avoid raising prices for our customers, instead choosing to absorb annual cost increases ourselves. These costs have come from suppliers and third parties, as well as steadily increasing data usage and demands that have required us to invest in our network. However, as with many other ISPs, our costs have now risen significantly to the point where we can no longer avoid making changes without compromising our level of service.”
As part of a Chorus promotion, Voyager recently tripled the speed of its most popular plan from 100/20mbps (down/up) to 300/100; however, this saw data usage increase by 14% in one month, putting further cost pressure on the business.
“Rather than limit speeds to the internet, we would rather bill people a fair price and give them the fastest internet experience that we can,” says Woodhouse.
The company’s latest project – a major six city nationwide 100 gigabit core network upgrade – is another assurance to its customers that its services will remain fast, reliable, and congestion free, says Deidre Steyn, Voyager Chief Commercial Officer.
“Thanks to these investments in our infrastructure, Voyager customers will continue enjoying premium service, and will soon be able to purchase new products from us, like Hyperfibre, offering up to 8Gbps internet to the home” Steyn says. “Kiwi households are consuming 15% more data year on year, which means that our network needs to be able to handle rapidly rising demand and usage.”
Steyn points out that Voyager’s customers have certainly appreciated the company’s efforts, with a recent customer satisfaction survey scoring Voyager an NPS (Net Promoter Score) of +59.
“Industry average NPS for a telco sits under +10,” says Steyn, “As a premium provider we want to maintain our customers’ high satisfaction, and these changes will enable us to do that.”