The #NZADSL IRC channel was originally formed by MarkFoster (and others) as a chatroom for the ADSL Mailing List - which was shut down in 2008. ADSL was the means by which most people from NewZealand had BroadBand delivered to their homes during the turn of the century period, and with access to this invariably controlled by the then-lines-monopoly TelecomNZ, the MailingList was very busy during the late 90's and early 00's with discussions on various ADSL and broadband related topics. Discussion regularly covered technical solutions to end-user situations and also discussion on the problems caused by lack of competition in the marketplace - later somewhat resolved by Local Loop Unbundling and the separation of Telecom into Retail organisation Spark, and wholesaler Chorus.

The main reason the #NZADSL room was started was to bring together technical people from the MailingList in a forum where they could discuss ADSL issues in realtime. A useful sideeffect was that #NZADSL did over time attracted all sorts of NZ geek types representing various ISPs and other IT organisations. A reasonably high level of tech savvy was expected of participants.

UnderNet was the IRC Network of choice for #NZADSL. Many LUG participants from across NZ also frequented the chatroom, making it of relevance to this wiki.