Chris Barton: Weird bleats signal competitive era

COMMENT

"It's those two - the black and the yellow." Steve the installer guy pulled the wires free from their connections inside the master phone jack. My Telecom dial tone was finally silenced - replaced by a new one from ihug Connect.

It happened on the morning of July 23 - the sweet sound of telecommunications competition. For the first time in the history of Auckland, thousands of its residents (those who can see the Sky Tower from their roofs) now have a choice of phone provider.

After years of writing about the high cost of telecommunications services and the failings of regulation, I've been longing for the chance to put my money where my mouth is. I've been accused of being anti-Telecom. I'm not - I'm unashamedly pro-competition and pro-consumer choice.

Yes, I do get annoyed with Telecom and its anti-competitive ways. But I also recognise that what it is doing is normal business practice. Telecom does play dirty though - such as the way it's making life difficult for me since I cut its line. Ihug Connect put in my request to Telecom for a "call redirect" service on July 22 - so that calls to my old number would get a message saying my number had changed. But Telecom didn't put in place the call redirect until four days later. That wasn't much of a problem because I still had Telecom's Call Minder on my old number - so I just left a message on that telling callers to ring my new number. But it was a deliberate ploy by Telecom to inconvenience me. It's particularly dirty because I know Telecom can put a call redirect in place in a matter of minutes - as it did only a few weeks earlier when I had a fault on my line. In that case, Telecom showed excellent customer service, immediately redirecting calls to a Vodafone mobile and even ringing me to check everything was okay.

Telecom is also behaving badly about my new directory listing. Ten days after the change it still hasn't listed my new number. More evidence of anti-competitive behaviour because it's just a five- minute job. I rang Telecom 123 to ask when my listing would happen and was told it could take three weeks.

At this point my frustration is redirected to our telco ministers, Government officials and telecommunications commissioner - all of whom seem incapable of reining in Telecom. It's particularly annoying that I've had to give up my phone number of 20 years to make this change. And that the regulatory mechanism - "number portability" - that would allow me to keep my number when changing providers is nowhere in sight. The optimistic outlook is late 2005, but most insiders I speak to say Telecom will keep delaying the process until 2007.

Despite Telecom's consumer abuse and the ineffectual regulatory efforts, so far, I'm very happy with ihug Connect. But like all change it takes a bit of getting used to. My phone ring is a weird series of long bleats - quite different from a Telecom ring. It's also strange that it requires power - so if the electricity goes out so does my phone.

Some monitored alarms - the ones that use keypad sounds - don't work on ihug Connect. But alarms that use a modem to dial the security company work fine. At the moment, I'm also finding I can't Dial a Pizza - because Pizza Hut's system thinks my new number that begins 963 is outside the delivery area. And my son on his OE in Spain says the dialling prefix service he uses to get cheap calls isn't being accepted either. Ihug Connect assures me both problems will be remedied shortly. Offsetting these niggles is a raft of benefits including cheaper land to mobile calls - 49c/min versus Telecom's 71c/min - cheaper tolls, call waiting, forwarding, voice mail and more, blistering broadband internet, and best of all, a saving of $60 a month. Viva la competition.

* Email Chris Barton