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The NZ Herald reports that Telecom is about to discontinue "entry level high-speed internet service" known as JetStream Starter, formerly JetStart.

That anyone could classify this service as "high speed internet" beggars belief and at no time did it even come close to qualifying as broadband -- but it was a great way for Telecom to charge broadband prices for a service that was only just over two times faster than dial-up.

I don't think anyone will shed a tear for the loss of this 128Kbps lemon with its "open chequebook" data-caps and lackustre performance.

JetSurf, the product which eclipsed JetStream Starter only just qualifies as broadband, and even then only for downloads. If, like me, you sometimes want to upload large files to your webserver or send emails with large attachments then you're still burdened by a sub-standard upload speed of just 128Kbps.

The good news is that there's talk of a 512Kbps service being made available early next year. Knowing Telecom however, the pricing is likely to be so high as to place it out of the reach of most non-commercial users.

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But Telecom is also in the news for another reason.

It appears that Nortel has been attempting to use the trademark "NT Northern Telecom" but the courts have ruled that this would be a breach of Telecom's own trademark.

Yes, even though the term "telecom" is widely regarded as generic and if you're anyone else you can't register a generic name as a trademark, Telecom have managed to do so.

Of course it could be argued that when Telecom registered its trademark the word "telecom" wasn't quite as generic as it is now -- but I believe the law also says that if an already registered trademark becomes a generic term then it can be ruled invalid.

According to an IDG report, the ruling judge admitted that he agreed "with the assistant commissioner's finding that the stylisation of the appellant's device mark and the addition of the adjective 'Northern' would do nothing to disabuse the New Zealand consumer of an overriding perception that any product or service using the mark Telecom would be that of [Telecom NZ]."

But that didn't seem to make any difference -- Nortel were still told that *they* couldn't use the generic term "telecom" in their trademark even though Telecom NZ could. Go figure!

However, it's not just Telecom that's battling over trademarks...

In a case that has its similarities with the Telecom/Nortel punch-up, the mighty Google has been arguing over the domain name froogles.com -- but in this conflict it would appear that David has slain Goliath.

Despite having used the subdomain froogle.google.com for quite a few years, two out of three judges on an ICANN panel decided that the domain name froogles.com didn't infringe -- even though (in my opinion) there's far more chance of confusion between the two names than there is in the Telecom/Nortel case.

I leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

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