Telecom lines up customers

By PAUL BRISLEN

Chris Thompson is the man at Telecom who set the audacious goal of increasing the number of broadband residential users to 250,000 by the end of next year. It took Telecom four years to hit the 100,000 mark, so Thompson has his work cut out.

The man who runs Telecom's online marketing division sought inspiration from how other countries achieved a rapid uptake of broadband customers.

"We looked at Canada which is very similar to New Zealand in a number of ways. Actually, New Zealand has a higher internet usage level than Canada so that's to our advantage."

Canada hit the 2000 new customers a week mark at its peak so Thompson is cautiously optimistic he can hit the same mark.

"We've set similar goals internally at Xtra and made them - the only real difference this time is that we've made our intentions public. That's going to add some pressure." Pressure of a different kind will come from Telecommunications Commissioner Douglas Webb and the Government. They will watch Telecom closely to see if it achieves its goals, particularly in light of the decision not to unbundle Telecom's network.

Unbundling would give Telecom's competitors the right to install their own equipment in Telecom's exchanges and deliver their own services over Telecom's network.

Instead the commissioner recommended "bitstream wholesale" where competitors can rent space on Telecom's network to offer customers different products.

Webb said he chose that approach over unbundling for one reason: urgency.

"If you want to increase the number of broadband customers rapidly then unbundling's not going to do it for you. It would take at least two years to implement and then it's not certain it would deliver."

But how exactly is Telecom going to hit that golden target? Thompson wouldn't go into specifics about marketing and promotional activities and noted there were additional issues.

"It's not just the availability of the service. You've got to look at hiring new call-centre staff to answer the customer calls. You've got to hire new technicians to drive the new vans you'll need to go out to the customers, that sort of thing."

Telecom estimates that about 30 per cent of that target will be delivered by its competitors offering service under the new wholesale regime, but Thompson admits Telecom doesn't have any control over that.

"The danger is they will move quickly to offering their own network services and use bitstream simply as a way of gaining customers in the short term before moving them over." Telecom faces stiff competition in some areas from companies such as Wired Country and Woosh, which are building fixed-wireless networks offering residential customers different products and services.

However, Thompson is confident that Telecom can deliver the goods. In the coming months Thompson expects Telecom to ramp up its promotional activity.

"The price point for the service is pretty low already at $39.95 so that's not going to move terribly much but there are plenty of other things we can do."

Thompson also has a secret weapon.

"If we get to 250,000 we'll have a greater penetration rate than Australia. Perhaps we should do that - advertise 'Beat Australia' as our logo."

Thompson may just be on to a winner with that.