Telco 3G court scrap great PR, says Telecom chief

Paul Reynolds says Vodafone's complaint should never have gone to court. Photo /Brett Phibbs

A confidential deal between rowing telcos Vodafone and Telecom has ended the legal battle but Telecom says it has landed some big punches in the PR fight.

Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds said the action by Vodafone had been good publicity for the launch of his company's new mobile network.

"It's been a phenomenal PR week for Telecom. We can't believe our luck."

A day after facing off in court, Vodafone and Telecom reached a settlement which saw Vodafone drop its legal action and Telecom agree to remedy the source of interference from its network.

The deal was announced just hours before High Court judge Justice Geoffrey Venning was due to make a legal ruling on Vodafone's application for an injunction on Telecom's new mobile network.

Reynolds said he was delighted with the settlement.

He said in the past 48 hours Vodafone had outlined the issues and engineers from both companies were working side-by-side to fix the problems.

"It should never have gone to court - it's a piece of nonsense," said Reynolds.

He said sorting the dispute out between them was the right way to do business in telecommunications.

"Mobile networks work together all over the world - sometimes three and four players - there's always interference. Radio engineers have to sort out interference issues," said Reynolds.

It was the extent of the interference which was at the heart of the dispute.

Vodafone claimed "spurious" interference was seriously damaging its business, costing the company its reputation at the same time its rival was in the midst of a massive advertising campaign.

Vodafone chief executive Russell Stanners said the company's action had nothing to do with the imminent launch of Telecom's XT Network.

"It's to do with the fact that clearly in the last three months we saw some significant increases in call-quality issues and dropped calls," said Stanners.

"Both parties could have benefited from a conversation on this months ago - it didn't happen," said Stanners. "But be very clear, Telecom are installing filters to address an issue, more than they agreed before we took action."