Telecom New Zealand said today it has signed up 100,000 customers to its new nationwide WCDMA/HSPA network since launch at the beginning of June, just over five weeks ago. The operator has also touted an incentive for iPhone users to bring their device to its new XT network, pledging to offer a NZD600 (US$377) account credit and 240MB of free data a month for two years to customers connecting an iPhone 3GS to the network and signing up to a two-year contract at NZD79.95 a month. Telecom claims its network is the country’s fastest, surpassing the speed of rival Vodafone. Telecom plans to upgrade to HSPA+ technology later this year.

Telecom’s 100,000 HSPA subscriber base represents around 4 percent of its total connections count (2.3 million), according to Wireless Intelligence. Telecom’s 850MHz 3G network (supplied by Alcatel-Lucent) will ramp up competition in New Zealand’s mobile broadband market. The operator has invested over NZD574 million (US$364 million) in the network and sees deployment of the new technology as key to grabbing market share from dominant player Vodafone (53 percent market share). Last October, Telecom completed an internal review of its future mobile technology deployment, choosing a migration to the GSM family of technologies as its roadmap. Although Vodafone is the biggest threat to Telecom, the country is also set to gain a long-awaited third operator with the launch of NZ Communications’ new network – 2degrees – in August. A new MVNO – using Vodafone’s 3G network – from TelstraClear is also due to launch soon.