Swain sees key role for TVNZ in wireless

By RICHARD BRADDELL utilities writer

Communications Minister Paul Swain wants TVNZ's transmission subsidiary Broadcast Communications to play a key role in developing wireless telecommunications links to rural communities.

Possibly TVNZ's most profitable operation, BCL is important because of its chain of transmitter sites on high points the length of the country.

Last month, BCL paid Clear Communications $30.5 million to end a restriction that barred it from entering the telecommunications market.

The Government is considering whether to split BCL from TVNZ and make it a standalone state-owned enterprise.

But Mr Swain also sees BCL playing a vital role in fostering telecommunications competition in rural areas by entering commercial partnerships with other telcos wishing to co-locate or use its facilities and spectrum to service those areas.

"My interest is in settling the structural [ownership] issues pretty promptly and then looking at the telecommunications possibilities," Mr Swain said.

He is in no rush to accede to the wishes of National's telecommunications spokesman, Alec Neill, who told the Business Herald that he wanted local loop unbundling put back on the agenda for discussion during select committee deliberations on the Telecommunications Bill.

Perhaps the most interventionist regulatory action possible, unbundling would require Telecom to open up its exchanges so competitors can co-locate their own equipment for high-speed data transmission over its lines.

It was rejected by the telecommunications inquiry and has not been adopted by the Government.

Mr Swain said his impression from a recent trip to Europe was that unbundling had resulted in extensive litigation, raised many technical issues and few new entrants had taken advantage of it after the collapse in telecommunications company share prices.

But Mr Neill said that although National supported the Telecommunications Bill, it wanted further consideration of unbundling and the Kiwi Share so the bill provided adequate protection of rural users.

Explaining a radical policy shift since National was in government, he said the then Communications Minister Maurice Williamson admired the Irish telecommunications reform, which at that time did not involve unbundling.

"But they are unbundling now ... Should we not, at this point in time do it now?" Mr Neill said.

Mr Swain was adamant that while those were legitimate issues for discussion, his aim was to get a regulatory structure bedded down after a decade in which Telecom had effectively been the regulator.

An international search for the first telecommunications commissioner is under way.

Mr Swain said it would be difficult to balance the benefits of an international candidate who might have an excessive regulatory bias against the virtues of a local who knew the scene but might be committed to one or other side of the regulatory debate.