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A better place indeed! How would you like 1 Terabyte of data to use on your broadband connection? Rumours have been circulating recently that NZ based (and owned) ISP Slingshot are looking to introduce a referral reward programme that offers users some sort of reward, based upon how many people they refer who sign up. Now, it appears that this is to become reality.
There have been conversations occurring in Slingshot’s user forums involving members of their Marketing Team that indicate that this is about to get the green light. According to the latest information available, Slingshot users who successfully refer 10 people who sign to the company’s broadband plans will be gifted 1TB of data to use over 12 months on their broadband connection.
The thread was started by yours truly as a slightly tongue-in-cheek topic, as I have referred a number of people to Slingshot due to the excellent network performance and very good customer service received. Scott Hoogerbrug from Slingshot’s marketing team is very active in the forums, and picked up on the thread, and has obviously taken it back to the Marketing and Management teams for further discussion.
Whilst nothing has been confirmed yet, it looks like the company has listened, and come up with something truly worthwhile for their customers. Watch this space as this unfolds. As soon as I can get confirmation I’ll post it here. Until then, feel free to discuss it in our forums.
Update: Further to the above, the following questions have been asked by Scott with regard to the offer…
how does unlimited data for life sound… this is unlimited in every sense of the word: no traffic management, fair use or any of those dirty words maybe for the top referrer?
The ’10’ may be flexible, apparently. The question has been put: give us a number within reason you’d see as worth it. What do you see as a reasonable number for such a reward?
Update: Scott from Slingshot has posted back to confirm that the number of referrals for 1TB of data has been set at 5. As soon as there’s a official release date, I will post the good news.
Comments
99 responses to “Slingshot give away 1TB of data”
that’s a truckload of data to get through in a year! Imagine the p…p…pictures one could look at.
For life ha ha ha could download youtube – all of it!!!
If data in New Zealand is that expensive that ISPs can’t afford to offer unlimited plans, how can an ISP do this? It sounds a bit off to me.
I know that the service here is nowhere near reasonable, but Telecom said there was nothing that could be done, and the line was functioning normally.
Andrea
Opera Fan
Thanks for keeping the comments above board for so long 😉
Badbadleroybrown
Would you want to download all of youtube, with all the crap that’s there?
Andrea
I’d say because it’s to 1 or a very number of customers, and not the whole customer base. It’s a promotion, and a very few lucky people will have internet how it’s supposed to be. Good on Slingshot for doing it, I say – especially if it highlights the state of the network infrastructure in this country.
With regard to your broadband, who is your ISP?
Any word on this yet? I’d be keen to switch over and sign a few peeps up.
The offer is still being worked out. There has been some forward progress, but it may be a while before we see the official announcement. These things take time, as the marketing plan has to be worked out, and technical support have to apprised, so they can ensure that the infrastructure is robust enough to handle any increase in demand that this could bring about.
I’d say they were waiting till they got some of there own gear installed to have more control on what they can offer, but thats purely a guess.
when it is announced im more than likely going to switch over and offer my services to 1 lucky slingshot user as a ref
I took a look at the thread on slingshot’s forums, and I’d much rather receive something, no matter how small, than go in the draw and ‘maybe’ win. Keep it clean and tidy, and no waiting for the slim chance that you might win. Lay it on the line and everyone knows what they’re getting, and can be happy with it.
Dammit
I’m not sure this is the case. Slingshot appear to be in a holding pattern with regard to unbundling, and doing what I consider the wisest course – serving up the best resold ADSL they can whilst waiting to see what regulation and market movements bring.
Boomer
I agree with you. Simplicity is better 🙂
On another note, I’ve received word the 1TB give away has been signed off, and I’ll let you know when it’s announced publicly.
I’ll be signing up if they have some sort of sweetener for new customers. With ihug at the moment and it’s average speed average latency and disconnects now and then.
I’m just not sure about how seriously Vodafone will be taking ADSL when they’re obviously pushing their wireless products.
ihug turned to crap a long time ago and Vodafone probably won’t do too much about it. There’s only so much an ISP can do in NZ because of the whole deal with Telecom. It doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon either. We’re all screwed when it comes to decent internet.
Our ISP is Telecom so they should be OK right? They own all the lines, the Southern Cross cable, and other hardware so their service should be the best.
Wow.
great to see all the positive feedback here
Karl is correct about the Terabyte referral promotion and we should be launching sometime next week.
I’ll post in the forums once I have more details 🙂
YEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m there!
Time to start polling the family and friends for all the Xtra users to see who wants decent internet. Only problem I see is non-techie people tend to use their ISPs email addresses instead of google etc so will have to convince a few to give those up.
Thanks Slingshot 🙂
Although I’ve got gmail I’d happily turf an xtra email address if their crappy service goes with it. A small price to pay I say!
I’m ready to change and happy to let someone refer me to Slingshot to get your numbers up.
Slingshot you guys rock!
1 TERABYTE????
pretty crazy mate
2 months left on contract with orcon be seein ya soon
anyone wanna buy my referral lol!
@Scott B
Agreed. Vodafone purchased Ihug after it had already started it’s downward slide in the hands of an Australian parent, so it will be interesting to see if they can focus on ADSL and wireless, and whether their backhaul capabilities (including a recently signed agreement with fibre network owner/operator Vector) will improve the Ihug offering.
@Andrea
It would be nice if it worked that way, but the evidence proves otherwise. While Telecom do have all the assets and access to make a very good ADSL product, they have turned this opportunity down. According to many reports, and Epitiro (contracted by the Commerce Commission to monitor and report on the top 5 NZ ISPs), rated TelstraClear, Slingshot and Orcon are the top three in the last two quarters, with Xtra and Ihug holding the two last places. The report for the first quarter of 2008 is due any day now, so this will be an interesting read.
@Scott from Slingshot
That is great news, as the comments here show. Looking forward to next week, as it appears many others are 🙂
@Bob
So you see this as good news? 😉
@Boomer & Andrew
This is a bit of an issue, but may as well wean the poor people away from Xtra now, rather than later, and let them experience broadband from ‘A Better Place’ (Scott – couldn’t resist!).
To all
Thanks for the great feedback. It’s good to see that this topic interests so many people.
I’ll be keen on this! When does it all start and how long have we got to sign up 5 people? Some might take some convincing 😐
NEXT WEEK????
WE WANT IT NOW!!!!!
hahaha you guys know it was april fools a couple of weeks ago what NZ isp is giong to give away a TB of data to customers yeah right!
Most ISPs wouldn’t even go through a tb of data a month.
Winners………
1 week to go…which day next week, Scott???
Winners all right. Winners of 1 TB of data to use in a year 🙂
If it was April Fool’s Slingshot wouldn’t let it go on for so long because they’d just end up with egg on their face when it hit the news. Use ya brains.
Sad Sam = happy 🙂 🙂 🙂
Well, here’s somewhere I haven’t been in a long while…
Looking good hun. Looking good Slingshot, too.
You’ve got my email now, be great to catch up. Been too long?
Elly
Not sure. Scott is the one to answer that.
Chopper Harley
As Mike pointed out this is the real deal.
Sad Sam
Err – good to see!
Theresa
Email sent.
Damn that Slingshot.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/260944149.png
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
I never thought I’d see ‘Terabyte’ ever be mentioned by an ISP, least of all one in New Zealand. Not for years yet. We’ve been conditioned for years about how expensive data is in NZ because of our location, and the undersea fibre costs billions and costs have to be recouped, etc, etc, etc.
Hopefully now people will start to see how important being connected is to our financial success on the world stage, and to our lifestyles. I’d hoped for this from the government for years but they just don’t get it.
Way to go Slingshot! I’d never really given much thought to your company, but I’m more than happy to change to you (we’re currently with Xtra – it’s very shoddy) on the back of something such as this.
Scott, it’s ‘next week’ today! Its been a while since I was excited about anything an NZ ISP was doing. Funny feeling all over.
Can’t wait to see this come out. It’ll be way cool not having to wonder whether to buy another data block or not then seeing it go to waste when you don’t use it all 🙁
Why do ISPs have data blocks that expire?
So we are almost there people 🙂
Slingshot now has an offical release date of the 23rd of April – this Wednesday!
Thanks for your support.
Marty
Almost buddy, almost…
That Guy
You raise some good points – the phrase ‘Terabyte’ isn’t one expected to be uttered by an ISP. Whilst international capacity is a (big) part of it, there’s also all the back end infrastructure that allows for an ISP to push a point of difference. Also, with another trans-tasman cable coming, hopefully this will push prices down even more.
I – like many – have been very disappointed with the current government’s approach to a digital economy. There has been much talk, and a little movement, but none of the sea change required to get us to where we want to be. In fact, we’re still lagging behind, and if this continues, we’ll be permanently stuck in the economic backwaters.
Clothes Girl
The reasons for this are manifold – mostly it’s about cost and predictability with regard to network demands. Hopefully, we’ll see this change, as currently there is only 1 ISP (that I know of – Kinect) that offer data blocks that roll over.
Scott
Thank you for posting back with the good news! We’ll all be looking forward to Wednesday with anticipation.
http://forums.slingshot.co.nz/viewtopic.php?t=1356
On ya slingshot!
@ Clothes Girl
we’ll be doing data blocks that dont expire soon too – we’ve called it data banking
it’s to go with our new broadband plans coming soon.
Awesome news Scott – thanks for the update!
OK, Telecom = bad. Any suggestions on who I should change to? 😉
Awesome…thanks Slingshot for doing this – no one else has done anything even close – way to go.
This is a big call by Slingshot.
What happens if everyone jumps on board? Each family or group of friends would have at least 1 out of 5 technically minded people, so they’ll jump on, and be convincing everyone else on board too. I hope the network and customer services can handle it all. We don’t want to see another debacle like Xtra Go Large. I guess we’ll know all the details tomorrow and can judge from there what the effect is going to be.
I wish Slingshot the best – someone in New Zealand has to stand up and dare to be different – even with everyone reselling the same service with their own twist. Make the twist a big one!
They would’ve talked to their network admin guys to see if they could deliver, be pretty silly if they didn’t! I’m willing to give it a go though as I’m sick of Orcon. Stuck with them from a couple of years back as they promised improvements but still have problems getting hold of anyone on the phone which I have to do quite a bit. What Slingshot customer service like?
Scott from Slingshot
That’s great news! When can we expect the new plans? (Don’t expect much, do we?)
Andrea
I don’t know, there is one that comes to mind – I’ve seen their name mentioned around here a few times….
I’ve been with Slingshot for about a year now (we also have a high speed wireless connection from another company for redundancy) and have found the service great. There have been a couple of issues during this time, but they’ve been resolved promptly, which speaks volumes about the company. I’d recommend with or without any benefit to myself (and have been so far, with more than 5 people already signed up…).
Pacifier & Leadpipe
I would definitely say they’ve run this past the network guys. This will have some impact on the network, and hopefully they’ve also promised increased funds from the increased revenues to add to the network infrastructure.
I really wanna how all this works. What happens if someone already has dial with slingshot or tolls, how long have we got to sign up 5 people, do they get anything for it, can they sign up to any plan or does it have be a certain one. Sounds good but things like this usually have some sort of catch.
how it works is all the leachers sign up to slingshot sign up their mates and hopefully their mates aren’t leachers like them so it all balances out instead of the whole thing ending up like orcon a couple of years back. slingshot are gonna end up like the quiksilver or xnet of today lol
Nah mate they only get 1TB which they get 2 use ova 12mnths so thats like nt evn 100GB a mnth. Slingshot data is pretty cheep but they still b makin $$$ on it so insted of usng it 2 hook up sum girls n drugs hpfully they put it n 2 buying more banwidth chur!
I’m in the industry and I don’t think Slingshot can deliver on this. It’s enough of a struggle to make money using the current reselling regime and giving away stupid amounts of data like this is just asking for trouble. Who knows what Slingshot are doing that makes them think they’re special but this isn’t the way for a NZ ISP to make money.
All they’re going to do is what has been pointed out above and end up attracting all the leechers and hard core downloaders who are a drain on the network. All the leechers will get their mates on who’ll get their mates on and so on and so on and while national peered traffic is ok international traffic and traffic to Telecom and TelstraClear will become sluggish at best. Be interesting to see the Geekzone and Slingshot forums in a month or two after this.
@ Karl
“I would definitely say they’ve run this past the network guys.”
Ran it past .. but didnt listen as far as I’ve heard…
@John … I think your 100% on the money there
Realist
It looks like we’ll have the answers to these questions and more tomorrow (afternoon, from what I’ve read on Slingshot’s forums). As far as I understand, the referral has to be a new customer to Slingshot who signs up for broadband, and internet.
Terminator
There are two possible extremes to this. As you’ve suggested the ‘leechers’ bring at least 5 others on board who quite possibly are family/friends who don’t use the internet that much, and balance it out. The other side is the leechers bring on more leechers, who bring on more leechers, etc. Hopefully it pushes more toward the former than the latter.
Surfer Dude
It’s still a number of users who have ~85GB a month to use which they otherwise didn’t. Also yes – it’d be good to know they’re putting the extra money towards bandwidth and network infrastructure (an interesting way of phrasing that, by the way!).
John
It’s good to have someone comment who’s in the industry. I agree that the network load will increase markedly, but surely it’s common sense to run some figures and work out an idea of what’s required to handle this load? Slingshot have said in passing ‘it’s how they build their network’ so I guess this will be the litmus test for it.
As much as I appreciate valuable insight, I hope in this case what you’ve said doesn’t pan out. The altruistic reason for this is I’d like to see a NZ ISP succeed with this. The selfish reason behind this is I am a happy customer and don’t want to see the performance turned pear-shaped.
Concerned User
Another with insight – thanks for your comments. I hope they paid some attention to what the people actually delivering the products and services had to say. It is a team effort, after all.
By reading what has been posted so far, it appears that today is the day. I’m not sure I’m interested in 1 Terabyte of data to use, but I am interested from the point of view of the state of New Zealand broadband. If Slingshot can deliver what is promised then this bodes well for us the consumer in the future.
Allan
Today is the day by all accounts, with an announcement expected this afternoon, I believe. Maybe Scott can confirm.
Update: The announcement will be made at 4pm today 🙂
I don’t reckon this is going to do much with the number of people who have broadband already. Most of NZ has it so who are they aiming for. Doesn’t make much sense.
Can’t wait for this – about time someone did something for the internet users in NZ. Had a look at their plans and they look pretty good and they’re meant to be bringing some more out soon. Can’t see them bringing worse plans out so lookin even better!
Hey guys it’s 4 o clock aye! Has anything been announced yet?
Any news yet? Part of me still thinks this is a have and can’t really happen in NZ so when I see it with my own eyes I’ll know it’s real!
I see it mentioned that new plans are coming as well. What’s going to happen here – unlimited data for all? Slingshot may as well go the whole hog and totally cripple their data network. This isn’t going to work and will in fact cause more issues and bad blood with customers than it will goodwill, no matter what they want to believe.
**bump**
its now offically all GO!
check out http://www.slingshot.co.nz/terabyte
thanks for all your support and feedback 🙂
i’ll be around on the slingshot forums (forums.slingshot.co.nz) if you have any questions
Thanks Scott.
Time to head over and read the all the details 🙂
John
I’m willing to take a wait-and-see approach to this. I know New Zealanders are quite jaded when it comes to internet, but I’m willing to wait and see how this pans out.
I thought I’d take a peek and see what everyone is so excited about. It seems like this is a pretty big deal to all the geeks out there 😉
It’s about time I changed my broadband from Xtra, anyway. Not sure why I signed with them – saw an advert on TV and rung Telecom and that’s what I ended up with. Silly me! Everyone keeps telling me that if I change my broadband will be so much better. I know it’s slow but how does it get ‘better’? I’m not a tech type person at all, just a girl who likes shopping 🙂
til the end of may???? Winnnnneeerrrrrrrs.
Sweeeeet ride Slingshot.
Be seein ya soon
Way to go SlingShot! Dunno who I’m gonna get to sign up but give it a shot. 1Tb is a whole lotta lovin!
Good to see this I guess but how does it affect the rest of us? Will all these people getting 1TB make the internet run slowly for the rest of us? It’s all shared isn’t it so these people are going to be unduly effecting it for the rest of us.
I guess it’s great for those who get given the data but will probably make things worse for us who don’t.
Your Momma (‘Yo Momma’ ya mean) if ya don’t like it stay away bro. We get it ya dont wanna know about it so go do whatever it is that you like and leave us alone so we can get our TB!
back at ya on the youtube stuff but can do whatever ya want with that data. Power to the people!!!!
This is awesome news Slingshot and mothership(?!). Does anyone know what the normal turnaround time for changing to another isp is? Might look at switching and seeing if I can hit 5 in the next couple of months – worth a shot.
this is cool but are slingshot Mac friendly. would love to swap over but only if my MacBook won’t have any problems connecting or anything like that. i guess it shouldn’t but just can’t be with internet lol cant see anything on there site about Macs
Some good news,
We’ve offically extended the expiry of this offer to June 30 🙂
Scott
That’s great news 🙂
iPhoneLover
Macs (and OS X) use the same networking protocols as everyone else, so there are no problems with Slingshot working with Macs. In fact, I’m typing this from an iMac. If you do have any further questions, feel free to drop me an email using the ‘contact’ link at the top, or in the mothership forums
Awesome deal guys. It’s also really good to see this coming from a 100% NZ owned company as well. Telecom is not a NZ company anymore, and neither are Ihug, or TelstraClear, and Orcon is owned by the government ultimately.
In fact, what is a government owned company doing competing against private & public companies in the first place? Seems a bit off to me.
Thinking about changing here but not sure if changing then finding 5 other people to change as well is worth it. I’d probably make it to 4 and that’d bite
Data? What? Traffic? What?
Can you guys keep it to a level where girls understand?
I’m signing up with Slingshot this morning so I hope they’re as good as everyone says. Can anyone tell me how long it will take to change from another provider?
Our internet is hardly working at the moment – it disconnects and we have to call in and have it fixed. It’ll go for a while and die again. According to Telecom they don’t know when it’ll be fixed. Is this our ISP or is it our modem or something else we can do?
Looking for a change and they don’t look too bad. Data prices good plans ok too. Might be a win…
This still doesn’t change the fact that NZ internet is so screwed! We get crap speeds and data caps that no one else in the world gets! It’s so stupid that we have speeds we can’t even use most of the time cuase it ill cost too much or we’ll run out and get dial speeds. Crappy!!!
well we need another fibre cable to aus or US and fibre to each house and business. only way for us to get ahead. not gonna happen though 🙁
Steve
I agree – I also think it’s great that the only NZ owned ISP in the ‘big 5’ are the ones to bring this to market. I am also curious as to the ramifications of a government owned ISP competing in the public space. Kordia state the Orcon is run at arm’s length, so I guess we’ll just have to see how it unfolds.
Tania G
Essentially the way internet is in NZ is that we are getting faster speeds at last, but we can’t enjoy them as we’re only allowed to use so much data. After this it gets expensive, or we’re capped to dial up speeds for the rest of the month. More data – or no caps – means we can fully utilise our high speed internet.
Adrienne
I don’t know the answer to this. Perhaps Scott from Slingshot can help here 🙂
Mr Gray
This is an issue to do with upgrading DSLAMs to ADSL2+. Alcatel have released a patch to fix this which Telecom are currently testing, and are looking to roll out nation-wide very shortly if this cures the issue. All you can do for now is call your ISP when it happens and have them rebuild your connection.
Hump
I’ve been more than happy with Slingshot – speeds are great.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/258629751.png
Charles
It has been dark thus far for NZ internet, but it’s initiatives like this, and the 2nd trans-tasman cable that are finally shining some light on the situation.
Energetic Bunny
We do need another cable. Having fibre to all premises would be great, but I think costs are still a little prohibitive at present. However, I do think we should start moving in the right direction!
Adrienne,
It takes around a week to switch to Slingshot.
Give us a call on 0800 89 2000, our friendly staff can step you through it – its painless experience 🙂
Great – thanks Scott!
I’ll be doing that Scott – hope it’s as good as all you guys have been saying.
We’ve decided to help you out with the Terabyte programme.
So, when referring your mates, make sure you tell them about our special joining offer.
Join Slingshot broadband and receive an 100GB data block
This is how it works.
1. Sign your mate up
2. Once they signup, get them to email their new account number to getmoredata@slingshot.co.nz
3. We’ll quickly check it’s a new Slingshot broadband account, and then add the block!
Now this is a special online promotion, so to get the data credit they MUST email the above address. This is also a trial, and based on its success we might develop it further – so spread the news!
We’re almost tempted to go with Slingshot but the speeds and so forth at Telstraclear have been really good. The customer service is pretty bad but haven’t really had to use it much, so fingers crossed.
This means for every 5 customers Slingshot sign up they’re giving away 1.5TB of data. Hows the network going to hold up under this or will they turn into another Orcon 🙁
Nothing could be as bad as Orcon went. We switched from them to TelstraClear and haven’t looked back. Speeds are like night and day. Couldn’t do anything on Orcon at the end, nothing would work apart from browsing which was ok
Halogod
I believe that backhaul options are more robust now than they were a couple of years or so ago, and if Slingshot think they can handle the load, then great. I don’t think they’d do anything that would sink their network performance – even with the potential clients this could bring in.
Slingshot is up to the task. Our network is running great at the moment – we wouldnt offer all this data if it wasnt! 🙂
Think I might wait until after and if everyone’s still saying good things I’ll join up then. See how things pan out.
We are about to start the process for moving to Slingshot, so I will keep you posted with our fortunes.
U guys r gonna gt naild
c ya slngsht
Off peak data is looking sweet
Well, the time is upon us, so it will be in the next month or so if network issues are going to occur. At home, we’re experiencing great speed and reliability at present – it’s never been better.
Interesting to see what everyone has to say about the free off peak data (1am – 7am) which is about to be announced, as well.
I’d love 1TB – where do we sign?
Is this still happening or is it finished can’t find it on the website
Over here in the U.S. Comcast are bringing in data caps for their cable plans and AT&T are looking at it for their DSL plans. 5% of the users use over half the bandwidth so can kind of see their point for doing so. A lot of users use over half a TB a month here which would bankrupt either the ISP or the user in NZ.
To celebrate the launch of our new broadband plans, Slingshot has decided to extend the Terabyte promotion by THREE MONTHS.
This means you’ve got till 30 September 2008 to refer 5 mates – how cool is that!?
All our offers will work when referring too:
– 100GB
– Flick your ISP get three months free
– Free connection, free modem
Just remember, in order to be counted as a successful referral, your friend or family must enter your account number into the signup form.
If I switch from Ihug do I get 3 months free and the 100GB?
No sorry, it’s one or the other
so if we sign up fresh or switch its the same deal???
100GB: Switch
Three Months Free: Switch
Free connection, free modem: Signup fresh
So what’s Slingshot like. Who’s switched and how has it worked out so far? I am keen to switch but last time I did the new ISP who was supposed to be ok turned crappy not long after. Don’t want to go through that again.