Choices for internet users are continuing to reduce with minnow Woosh Wireless partially exiting the business.

Woosh's Canadian owner, Craig Wireless, said it had "sold" 9000 customers to Australian-owned internet provider M2 for $1.3 million.

The customers, who are mostly on copper broadband plans, will be served by Slingshot, part of the CallPlus group which M2 acquired last month.

Woosh provided fixed-line broadband alongside wireless internet, which it delivers through its own network of transmission towers.

Craig Wireless said in an announcement to the Toronto stock exchange that Woosh would focus on its "core strength of providing wireless broadband services to the New Zealand public".

InternetNZ chief executive Jordan Carter cautioned last year that while the "big picture" for broadband in New Zealand was positive, a growing share of the retail market was being accounted for by a smaller number of internet providers and that would need to be watched closely.

Woosh launched in 2003 when there were high hopes around the world that a new breed of wireless internet services would become a mass market service provider for consumers seeking internet access in the home.

However, the opportunity did not prove as a large as expected because of technological advances in the fixed-line market and the company has not turned a profit.