TelstraClear has released its half-yearly results, showing an improvement in earnings despite a drop in income.

The telco's total income for the six months to December 31 fell 4%, from $353 million to $339 million. However, the company was also able to cut its operating expenses by 7.2%, from $291 million to $270 million.

On a standalone basis and adjusted for intercompany revenues, EBITDA increased by 11.3%, from $62 million to $69 million.

Alex Ball, CFO for TelstraClear, says he is pleased with the results, given economic conditions, competition in the market, and the fallout from the Christchurch earthquakes.

"TelstraClear staff and management have worked hard to ensure that the result... was positive,” Ball says.

The reduction in expenses is attributed to taking advantage of targeted savings programmes, with capital expenditure actually rising as the company invested in rebuilding its network infrastructure in Christchurch.

"We remain committed to Christchurch and our network and customers there,” Ball says.

"We are also committed to providing high quality products and services over both our own high speed HFC network and the new government-promoted UFB.

One example is the experiment the telco ran in December last year in which it switched off its meters for a weekend to allow customers to download as much data as they liked. Some outages followed as users leapt to take advantage of the offer, but while InternetNZ labelled the promo ‘disastrous', TelstraClear said many customers were happy to trade speed for volume.