Vodafone should oust Telecom as the biggest internet provider to homes in the Wellington region if its $840 million takeover of TelstraClear is approved by regulators, says pollster Roy Morgan.

It said Vodafone's share of the national home internet market would rise from 11 per cent to 26 per cent, while its market share in Wellington would catapult from a lowly 5 per cent to 37 per cent, overtaking Telecom's 32 per cent share.

TelstraClear's service is popular in Wellington and Christchurch because it operates cable networks in the two cities.

But Telecom would remain the largest player in Christchurch with 40 per cent of the local market, versus 33 per cent for Vodafone post-merger.

Roy Morgan New Zealand general manager Pip Elliot said the merger would put ''significant pressure on Telecom in the internet and fixed-line markets across New Zealand'' and slightly increase its lead in the mobile market.

The pollster's figures differ somewhat from the Commerce Commission's estimate of the home internet market published in its latest annual monitoring report.

The commission put Vodafone's share of the market at a significantly higher 13 per cent and TelstraClear's share at 16 per cent.

It put Telecom's nationwide share at 49 per cent. TelstraClear boss Allan Freeth said yesterday that he believed his company had increased its share to about 17-18 per cent after winning an extra 40,000 customers and expanding its customer based by 7 per cent during the last financial year.

Based on the commission's figures, that would imply Vodafone's total share of the home internet market could rise above 30 per cent post-merger.

Roy Morgan said its figures were based on an annual survey of nearly 12,000 New Zealanders. The commission's numbers were obtained from a controlled survey of 1250 New Zealanders carried out by Auckland University.

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