Telecom will have to shell out $1.6 million to its opponents, following an out-of-court arrangement with the Commerce Commission.

Telecom's payment bill, since December now exceeds $25 million - $15 million to compensate consumers for XT outages and $10 million in Fair Trading Act violations.

The commission has ordered the Telco to give Vodafone and Orcon compensation for the spirited harm caused by three individual discount deals intended at holding on to wholesale clients on its network.

The commission started lawful action in the High Court last November over Telecom loyalty offers that if victorious, could have witnessed the corporation shell out $10 million for every violation.

Vodafone and Orcon that were also proffering wholesale services off their personal Auckland networks asserted that they would not be qualified for the agreements, unless they ink a minimum 90% of their wholesale business to Telecom, thus, destabilizing their own infrastructure investment.

Under Telecom's operational separation undertakings, its wholesale branch must retail broadband and phone services to additional Telcos under the same conditions and provisions as those given to its own selling business.

"We thought the loyalty offers were a legitimate response to competition, but non-discrimination is an undefined and untested concept, so the business had to do its best to navigate through considerable uncertainty", said Counsel, Tristan Gilbertson.