The new cut-price national ISP Ezysurf says it has taken legal action to prevent two other companies trying to "rip off" its brand.
The ISP, which is backed by New Zealand's largest private company, Dresden Equities, has been open for business for about a month.
Executive Rex Auty said in a statement yesterday that "we know we are doing something right when two other Internet service providers try to rip off our brand name."
The statement says two other ISPs who "attempted to introduce names very similar to Ezysurf" since the service's launch have been forced to withdraw under threat of legal action.
The statement does not name the other names or companies, but one of them is almost certainly the Mairangi Bay, Auckland-based STRONGNet, which registered the domain name ezsurf.co.nz on December 15. Registration details for the name are listed as having been altered on January 6, when Domainz re-opened.
Similar names registered in December include mywebsurfer.co.nz, mywebsurf.co.nz and mywebsurfing.co.nz - all registered to My Decision Dot-Com Dot-Au of Australia on December 20, with registration details subsequently altered on Jan 6.
On the other hand, Surfer Internet Services, which launched in Mt Eden, Auckland, late last year, still seems to be very much in business - and offering the same $27.95 flat-rate Internet deal as that touted by Ezysurf.
Other names, including sinesurf.co.nz and skysurf.co.nz, have been associated with Internet services for several years.
Meanwhile, Ezysurf is claiming strong early demand as an endorsement of its distribution model, which puts set-up CDs in customers' hands via Noel Leeming Computer City and Bond & Bond stores nationwide and also through online retailer Flying Pig.
"We've had to double our bandwidth and ports to handle the demand, which is certainly beyond what we expected," said Rex Auty. "The messages coming back to us strongly favour our philosophy of making it as easy to buy your connection as it is to surf the Web our way."