Comments on: OECD on Broadband

By: Cadmus

Cadmus — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 03:13:38 +0000

I.E.M. Mr K. Yes I agree IEM the shares should have been given to NZers to do with them as they wished!
MR K I put a proposal forward with some American collegues. I found out about the Railway set up we did our homework. We were the first. I had a couple of meetings and was given a.. Not at this stage. Next thing someone else has picked it up. I had a feeling they didn’t want any US involvement.
Well thats life!

By: lincoln

lincoln — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:25:27 +0000

There is no logic. Two mobile carriers, talking to each other setting cartel pricing. Simple. And believe it beacuse the two of them set their own interconnection rates which they then use as an excuse as to why mobile charges are so high!

By: Gaz

Gaz — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 18:11:59 +0000

Maybe we should be concentrating on the high cost of mobile phone calls rather than broadband. It costs me more to call New Zealand on peak than it costs me to call England, Australia and the US. Where’s the logic in that?

By: francis

francis — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 15:01:27 +0000

The OECD didn’t make a public announcement. Peter Nowak talked (by email or phone) to the guy in charge. It’s odd that we don’t do that more often. Especially when it comes to things like Telecom’s indefensible assertions about free local calls.

By: Mr K

Mr K — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:34:27 +0000

I’m sure it’s entirely coincidental (cough, cough) but I received notification from Xtra tonight that they were reducing the cost of my top end broadband package (10 gig, 2 M/bit) by 10 bucks per month ($59 down from $69).

By: Pamyla

Pamyla — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:22:32 +0000

If you think Telecom is screwing you on broadband what till they get rid of free local calling. yes it will happen when the technology upgrade is run out. Any place with less than 20,000 pop will not get an upgraded exchange unless they bring in paid local calls, and since the govt wont want a 2 tier system they will say the whole country will have to pay for local calls in order for the smallest 20% get any phone servioce at all.
Just wait it will happen

By: Barmypom

Barmypom — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 09:24:07 +0000

When you lift a telephone these days you can just about hear the sound of relentless sucking…

http://www.telescum.co.nz

By: Mr K

Mr K — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 07:33:20 +0000

Cadmus, there already is a company running fibre along the railway network as I understand it: http://www.fx.net.nz/ [no connection with them etc etc. All puns intended]

By: Russell Brown

Russell Brown — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 07:31:34 +0000

“Competition and private ownership work. In the US the state deregulated the old telephone monopolies and after the shake up things exploded with new services and lots of competition.”

No, that was a *regulatory action* – and a bloody stiff one: they forcibly broke up a dominant player, and quite strictly defined what the resulting entities were allowed to do. If you’re looking for an example of an unfettered market, that’s not really the right one to choose.

Cheers,
RB

By: l.E.M

l.E.M — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 06:33:57 +0000

It is so amusing to see someone floating that old fiction that state ownership really means ownership by the “people”. Rubbish. Just watch what happens if any of the people try to sell their share. Ownership implies the right to dispose of the property. Now if Cadmus wanted the people to really own it then he’d support state companies being turned into share holder companies with each citizen given shares, shares which they can sell if they wish. State ownership doesn’t mean the people control it at all. It means the politicians do.

Competition and private ownership work. In the US the state deregulated the old telephone monopolies and after the shake up things exploded with new services and lots of competition. The fact is that in the US you can get broadband telephone service via you TV cable company. I know someone who just did that. He pays $70 US in total and that includes his cabel television subscription, his unlimited broadband usage and his telephone service with unlimited free calls to anyone in the US and Canada. And if you want the real kicker he can call Auckland from the US cheaper than you can call from Wellington to Auckland. By the way I understand they have a service for unlimited phone calls worldwide as well for about $30 more.

He told me that years ago before deregulation his phone bills ran as high as $200 per month just for US calls and basic service. Now his bill doesn’t go above $22 for that portion unless he makes international calls. And all these services are produced by private for profit companies. And if he doesn’t like the service he has plenty of other options to pick from. There is now not only competition for long distance service but for local telephone service as well.

By: Russell Brown

Russell Brown — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 04:13:20 +0000

A word on the 128k upstream issue. Blame the Telecommunications Commissioner Douglas Webb. Having apparently set himself to recommend unbundling, he flipped the other way and designated a UBS service that seemed specifically designed to shelter Telecom: limited upstream speed and a specific ban on “real time” applications like VOIP.

As I understand it, there is a way forward on the 128k issue – it’s just going to take a long time. I wasn’t a fan of full unbundling – it’s something that should have been done along with privatisation – but I’m really starting to wonder now.

In the long term, the answer is infrastructure competition. Wired Country might be a better competitor now that it’s owned by Compass, but fibre’s what you want. There was a little money in this year’s budget for community MUSH networks, but there needs to be more.

And Telecom can just jam its objections about facing competition from the taxpayer-funded Advanced Network. You can’t break a whole economy to protect one company, even a big, important one.

Cheers,
RB

By: Rob Hosking

Rob Hosking — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 04:04:58 +0000

Well, as a longtime user of OECD stats for all sorts of things, all I can say is this is an EXTRAORDINARY move.

The OECD just doens’t normally get involved in this sort of thing. Telecom must have really pissed them off.

By: Rob Hosking

Rob Hosking — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 04:01:16 +0000

Well, as a longtime user of OECD stats for all sorts of things, all I can say is this is an EXTRAORDINARY move.

The OECD just doens’t normally get involved in this sort of thing. Telecom must have really pissed them off.

By: lincoln

lincoln — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 03:05:48 +0000

Can’t even get a monthly line rental for that.

By: stef

stef — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 02:59:47 +0000

For $40NZD a month I get broadband internet, free local calling, and the costs to call a handphone are tiny in comparison to nz. Oh and when I had a problem with my internet I dailed up Korea telcom’s english hotline and they had a person around within 2 hours who replaced the modem free of charge. I’d like to see any of the major players with that standard of service in NZ.

By: Cadmus

Cadmus — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 02:34:50 +0000

With no competition what do you expect.
On the other hand The telephone service was own by the people of NZ. Then flogged off at a discount. The idea should have been to keep the lines in the hands of NZers, but sell the services to anyone company who whish to rent the lines, set up communications, etc.
You still now have a monopoly, who can blame Telecom fighting every step of the way.
On the brighter side we still have free local calling. I bet that would have been one of the first things to go if Brash/Hide were running the place.
I was looking to set up my own telephone company. I was going to use the telephone lines that ran along the railway tracks part, of the former NZ Railways, but they weren’t interest at looking at a proposal.

By: lincoln

lincoln — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 02:31:17 +0000

Telecom are simply regulating the competion they wish to have. They allow businesses to compete but only on their terms. They decide when you are able to do something, and they decide how much you will earn. If you don’t like it, tough. You can’t go anywhere else. Look at the changes they are curerntly pushing through with regard to broadband plans and broadbaand speeds.

You are allowed a 2MB download but only a maximum of 196kbs upload. Why? Because VOIP is coming in a large way and for that you need bandwidth. Something they regulate. You want to talk for free bewteen offices, then you pay more for upload speeds higher than 196kbs. That way they may lose one way but get you back the other. This problem has recently been rectified (probably does not mean much) by the commerce commission which ordered Telecom to offer bandwidth to the maximum the equipment they use would allow. This is all good except for the fact that there aer many places in the pipe that one could bottleneck a service to slow it down. Which then leads to theproblem of how to prove it.

Either way, no matter what is done, the monoploy has total control. Until the local loop is opened up and compaines are allowed to put their own equipment in the exchanges for both voice and data nothing will change.

By: lincoln

lincoln — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 02:30:06 +0000

You are allowed a 2MBdownload but only a maximum of 196 upload. Why? Because VOIP is coming in a large way and for that you need bandwidth. Something they regulate. You want to talk for free bewteen offices, then you pay more for upload speeds higher than 196kbs. That way they may lose one way but get you back the other. This problem has recently been rectified (probably does not mean much) by the commerce commission which ordered Telecom to offer bandwidth to the maximum the equipment they use would allow. This is all good except for the fact that there aer many places in the pipe that one could bottleneck a service to slow it down. Which then leads to theproblem of how to prove it.

By: Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 01:34:45 +0000

Interested in a bipartisan show of hands. Does *anyone* believe that Telecom is not abusing it’s monopoly to screw customers? Both sides of the fence to answer:

By: rich

rich — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 01:18:47 +0000

If anything I’d expect that in places like the UK (where they have tolled local calls and the ability for an ISP to charge through the phone bill) the broadband take-up would be lower not higher.

But I don’t really buy “lack of competition” either. We have 2-3 choices of broadband wholesale provider in most urban areas (e.g. Telecom, Woosh, Wired Country) and numerous ISPs.
That’s no more than in many areas – much of the UK and US only have a single telco and a single cable company.

It’s misregulation that’s the problem, IMHO.