Telecom digs away regardless

By ADAM GIFFORD

Telecom is forgoing its usual charges to lay copper wires in new Pukekohe subdivisions, despite the developers already signing up for Counties Power's competing Wired Country fibre network.

Counties Power chief executive Neil Simmonds said Telecom was offered the chance to retail its services on Wired Country.

"Their engineers came and checked it out and said it would work technically, but they have now decided for policy reasons they need to install their own copper in parallel with our fibre," Simmonds said.

He said there was no chance Telecom would get its investment back, because every house finished so far had signed up with a Wired Country retailer with phone service from Worldxchange or Ihug.

"This is a classic big penis syndrome move, though that may be unfair to Theresa," Simmonds said.

"They are ripping up shareholders' money because that is the way they have always done it. They say they need this subsidy from the rest of the industry for uneconomic customers, but when they are threatened they can do it for free."

Subdivision residents will be able to choose from a range of retailers for broadband internet and voice services.

Developer Vaughan Hickson said Telecom had dug trenches in his Hampton Park subdivision without any consultation, ripping up lawns.

"I'm really annoyed. They couldn't do it while I owned the land, but once I passed the roads over to the council they used their standing agreement with the council to move in."

He said Telecom demanded $1500 a lot as a connection fee, which did not include the $8 a metre cost of laying the cable which is borne by the developer, compared with the $500 charged by Wired Country "for a better service".

"They offered to halve the price once I brought Wired Country in, which shows it is not based on cost."

Telecom spokesman John Goulter said the price developers were usually charged for connection was confidential and depended on population density and distance from the existing network, but confirmed it was usually between $1000 and $2000 a section.

The Pukekohe subdivisions have more than 200 sections.

He said Telecom decided to put its own lines in alongside the Wired Country fibre because it was cheaper to do it at the construction stage.

"We are concerned that if people move in and want to be supplied by Telecom, we want to be able to do so," Goulter said.

"Until Counties Power is established as a full service provider, we want to be sure we can provide a full range of services. We have to guarantee services such as 111."

It could not use Wired Country because Telecom's only residential broadband offering was a copper-based DSL (digital subscriber line) service.

Worldxchange director of sales and marketing Cecil Alexander said the 111 issue was a red herring, and his company would offer residents everything they could get from Telecom, as well as higher speed internet and additional features on their voice service.

Pricing should be ready within a week.

"It looks like Wired Country customers will be paying about $35 a month including gst for a voice-line service.

"The question is what other services we throw in for that, and what we will charge extra for," Alexander said.

Other services will include voicemail, call forwarding, including forwarding from specific numbers, call return, caller line ID, last number redial, call tracking, three-way dialling, plus services where calls from specific numbers such as telemarketing companies are automatically blocked.

Wired Country broadband services, which start at 1 megabits per second (Mbps) and go up to 100Mbps, are also priced below the Telecom offering.

Meanwhile, Counties Power now has Hamilton in its sights.

Simmonds said Counties Power had applied for licences to launch a wireless service in the city using the 3.5G frequencies it owns, and was keen to work with local lines company Wel Networks to roll out fibre.

"We expect the average cost will be lower than we have done here because we don't need to build another head end connecting to the world. We are down to marginal cost."

Alexander said Worldxchange would be going into Hamilton "arm in arm" with Wired Country.