By PAUL BRISLEN
As Telecommunications Commissioner Douglas Webb yesterday defended his decision to maintain Telecom's network monopoly, the OECD released figures showing New Zealand's broadband uptake is on a par with Hungary's.
New Zealand ranks in the bottom 10 developed nations, with Ireland, Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, Mexico and Turkey
worse off. Greece is last with almost no broadband connections.
New Zealand has about three broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, compared with just over five for Britain and more than 10 in the United States. The OECD average is 7.5 per 100 households.
No other OECD country has looked at and then rejected local loop unbundling, which allows competitors access to the incumbent's network to install their own equipment. But at the Telecommunications & ICT Summit in Auckland yesterday, Webb said no other country had looked at unbundling in quite the detail the commission did.
Unbundling had been overemphasised, he said.
"[Unbundling] has been described as the key regulatory decision of the decade.
"I think that vastly overstates its importance."
Instead, Webb said, the New Zealand model was one of measured intervention only once commercial negotiation had failed.
By limiting the amount of regulatory involvement, he believed the commission would keep its options open.
"There is a danger in regulating too much too soon, particularly when regulation relies on anticipating future market evolution."
Webb said several other OECD countries were considering moving to a lighter regulatory environment similar to New Zealand's because over-regulation was stifling the very market it was supposed to encourage.
He did deliver a stern warning to the telco industry on number portability - an area he described as "increasingly overdue for resolution".
Number portability would allow customers to keep their existing phone numbers when moving to new providers. To Webb it is the last great stumbling-block to a truly competitive environment.
"Everybody in the industry agrees we need number portability. We've been agreed for years".
But he said that consensus had yet to deliver a working solution and he had no power to intervene.
