KEY POINTS:
Telecom's wholesale boss Matt Crockett sat among his competitors in the telecoms market at a broadband conference this week but he is still poles apart from them when it comes to the issue of opening access to Telecom's network.
Smiling stiffly through criticism from internet providers ihug, CallPlus and Orcon about the slow pace with which Telecom is preparing for local loop unbundling, Crockett saved his true sentiments for the relative safety of a one-on-one interview with a journalist.
"Local loop unbundling is realistically about 16 months away," he told the Herald.
Had he said that to the faces of his competitors, Monday's broadband panel discussion may not have ended on such a civil note. They need unbundling now.
Telecom's smaller rivals in the market for internet and telephony services say they have hundreds of millions of dollars of investment at their disposal and ambitious plans to use unbundling to deliver better services to consumers but are hamstrung by lingering question marks hanging over how the new regime will work.
"We don't know the price of local loop unbundling or the timing. We're running unashamedly on two horses [as a result]," said Graham Walmsley, general manager of Blue Reach, an arm of Callplus which has US$450 million ($630 million) at its disposal to roll out a network of fixed line and WiMax wireless services.
Ihug chief executive Mark Rushworth said unbundling provisions that would give his company access to the lines linking customers and phone exchanges had yet to have any impact for consumers who were deeply dissatisfied with broadband services. "We've lost the customer's trust over broadband. There's a lot we need to do to get that back," he said.
"It's all happening too slowly," said Ernie Newman, chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association, who repeatedly questioned what the $2.2 billion in proceeds from the sale of Telecom's Yellow Pages division would be used for.
"It would be a travesty if that money was shot off to Australia, which seems to be a bottomless pit [for Telecom]," he said.
With the internet providers poised to invest in equipment to put in Telecom's exchanges, there was a tepid response to Wellington businessman Rod Drury's proposal for the Government to invest in a fibre optic network linking main centres and offering open access to any interested providers. The Australian Labor Party has said it will undertake a similar, multibillion-dollar scheme for Australia, if it is elected to power this year.
David Kennedy, senior analyst at research firm Ovum, added that the telecoms investment trend internationally was shifting from copper-line technology to fibre infrastructure.
"There aren't really any [other] short-term solutions that look viable in the long run," he said.
Orcon boss Seeby Woodhouse said: "In terms of national networks, there's a lot of fibre already."
Then Walmsley added: "There's a hell of a lot more that can be done with the copper in the ground."
"Should the Government choose they want to invest a huge chunk of money, fair cop. I'm not convinced by it as a taxpayer," Crocket said, for once in agreement.
Walmsley called for the upcoming auctions of radio spectrum suitable for WiMax wireless broadband services to be off-limits to existing major players such as Telecom and Vodafone.
