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Believe it or not - Number Portability Has Arrived!

Posted Fri 30 March 2007 @ 2:51 p.m. by Ernie

Local and mobile number portability has arrived in New Zealand. At last! Well done, Telecommunications Carriers Forum!It will be available from Sunday 1 April. Both local and mobile numbers will now be able to be kept by a subscriber who chooses to change service provider.TUANZ has issued a statement congratulating the carriers on this major breakthrough.

Categories: Fixed line carriers | Innovation | ISPs | Light relief | Regulatory | TUANZ policy | Wireless carriers

Wikify your content

Posted Fri 30 March 2007 @ 12:43 p.m. by Sarah

At the 2007 TUANZ Education yesterday US keynote speaker Miguel Guhlin encouraged Auckland primary school teachers to ‘wikify’ their lessons. By putting their content online he said educators can take part in an international discussion in any subject area – from ICT in education to how teach kids basic calculus. “We used to be told to think global, act local. Now it’s think global, act global.” During his presentation Guhlin skyped a colleague in Georgia who spoke about a number of initiatives...

Categories: Education

Data caps on $50 broadband plans

Posted Wed 28 March 2007 @ 9:37 a.m. by Sarah

With a data cap of just 5GB a month Telecom is offering one of the lowest data allowances in the market for broadband plans priced at around $49.95. Following the Go Large fiasco, it appears the telco is being very conservative in its data allowance. This is despite the fact that 60,000 customers signed up for Go Large - showing there is a real thirst among users for plans that have no data caps at all. TUANZ was alerted to the low data cap allowance by a user who noted that for the same...

Categories: Fixed line carriers | ISPs

A tax on competition

Posted Tue 27 March 2007 @ 9:18 a.m. by Sarah

TUANZ has released a media statement supporting Vodafone’s description of the Kiwi Share payment to Telecom as “a tax on competition that does nothing to increase customer choice”. CEO Ernie Newman says that the $50,000 payment Vodafone sends to Telecom everyday to comply with its Kiwi Share obligations does nothing to benefit the user. “That Vodafone and other carriers are required to subsidise Telecom’s allegedly loss-making services to non-viable customers, when those carriers might themselves...

Categories: Regulatory | TUANZ policy

Telecom moving to subscription-based services

Posted Tue 27 March 2007 @ 8:45 a.m. by Sarah

Telecom Retail GM for consumer marketing Kevin Bowler says the success of its fixed/mobile convergence billing plan Freedom, and its toll offers such as $25 to call Australia as often as you like, mean the company is moving to subscription based plans. According to Bowler, Telecom currently has around half a million billing plans, which they would ideally like to scale back to 500. These are apparently indicative figures because Bowler was talking at an ‘off the record’ media briefing yesterday...

Categories: Fixed line carriers

Yellow Pages - a Plea to Telecom

Posted Tue 27 March 2007 @ 6:28 a.m. by Ernie

Please, please, please Telecom. Congratulations! You have done well to generate truckloads of money from the very successful Yellow Pages business. Flush with all that cash, this is your moment to re-gain the trust and confidence of New Zealanders - your core customers. You know, better than we do, that you have under-prepared your network for the Internet age. You know that a generation of tech-savvy Kiwis are champing at the bit for high speed, high quality broadband services. Services essential...

Categories: Fixed line carriers | Innovation | Regulatory | TUANZ policy

VoIP Leaps Forward With Telecom Offer

Posted Mon 26 March 2007 @ 5:37 a.m. by Ernie

A voluntary offer by Telecom to make available two new services delivering Naked DSL looks set to bring competition and choice into the market significantly faster than if this had been left to the regulatory process.Naked DSL - the ability for Telecom's competitors to purchase a broadband line without a POTS voice service - is one of the key services designated in the amendments to the Telecommunications Act last December. But this year it has become apparent that these services would...

Categories: Fixed line carriers | ISPs | Regulatory | TUANZ policy

Long wait for number portability

Posted Thu 22 March 2007 @ 1:22 p.m. by Sarah

Number portability comes into effect in just over a week but as veterans of the telco industry well know, it's been a long time coming. A recent TUANZ Topics article about the regulated service prompted the following response from Geoff Lineham, who in 1996 was chairman of the Inter-Network Number Portability committee: "While we can look forward to celebrating the arrival of Number Portability this year, it is sobering to look back on some history. Way back 10 years ago the industry...

Categories: Innovation | Regulatory

Entry Barriers for Mobile Operators - Step Forward by Commission

Posted Thu 22 March 2007 @ 7:37 a.m. by Ernie

The Commerce Commission's investigation into entry barriers for mobile phone operators has taken a step forward. Submissions on its December 2006 Issues Paper have been posted on its Web site.TUANZ submitted a 17 page paper responding to all the Commission's questions. This is a most timely investigation. Most countries around our size and population have three to five mobile networks, but New Zealand has only two. And the fact that only Vodafone has a GSM network creates unique obstacles to...

Categories: Regulatory | TUANZ policy | Wireless carriers

Electricity companies moving into the telco space

Posted Wed 21 March 2007 @ 1:34 p.m. by Sarah

The article by Jenny Keown in today's Herald about TrustPower acquiring South Island telco CallSouth and contact centre Pulse Business Solutions indicates where competition for the telco dollar could lie in the future. When power companies get into telco services this can be good news for users, if the experience in Iceland is any indication. This tiny country ranks in the top five in the OECD for broadband uptake, and its high rates of connectivity are in part credited to power...

Categories: Fixed line carriers

Posted Tue 20 March 2007 @ 1:14 p.m. by Sarah

TVNZ launched its ondemand broadband service today, offering a mix of current and archival programmes via the internet. The media launch was held at TVNZ’s Auckland headquarters and was attended by independent producers Julie Christie and John Barnett, who have licensing deals with TVNZ to provide shows such as Celebrity Treasure Island and Shortland Street to local users. These programmes are part of the 10 per cent of paid content that is available. The other 90 per cent is a mix of archival footage,...

Categories: Innovation

Skyping on SchoolZone

Posted Mon 19 March 2007 @ 9:13 a.m. by Sarah

A highlight of Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s keynote presentation at the education conference is the Skype calls she makes to educators around the world. One hardy colleague in Shanghai rose at 4am last week in order chat to the New Zealand audience. It’s a technique popular with delegates because it shows just how easy it is to bring experts into the classroom. But for some teachers it appears that Skype isn’t possible under SchoolZone. That is Telecom’s secure network which is provided, for a fee,...

Categories: Education | Vendors

Still in the lower third – sigh

Posted Mon 19 March 2007 @ 8:50 a.m. by Sarah

For a brief moment this month it appeared as if New Zealand might have inched itself into the top twenty of OECD countries for broadband uptake. But then it turned out that the report by Statistics NZ which ranked the country in 19th placed had a methodology that was substantially different to the OECDs (see Downstream blog 'Broadband stats - optimisim shattered'). Now the MED have released a report that shows the country hasn’t budged from its rather ignoble 22nd place. The OECD is due to publish...

Categories: Regulatory | TUANZ policy

Voluntary Separation for Telecom?

Posted Sun 18 March 2007 @ 4:27 p.m. by Ernie

David Farrar has an excellent post on his blog today arguing for Telecom to structually separate on a voluntary basis. As one who has for years urged them to voluntarily unbundle the local loop I can only agree - there is a compelling business case for voluntary, rather than enforced measures once the status quo ceases to be an option. I hope Telecom are listening.

Categories: Fixed line carriers | ISPs | Regulatory | TUANZ policy

"The Most Powerful Day of Professional Development I've Had in 25 Years in Education"

Posted Fri 16 March 2007 @ 2:50 p.m. by Ernie

That's how one teacher described the TUANZ Education Conference here in Nelson this afternoon. Graeme Coleman of Motueka High School was among many who were delighted with the quality of the event including international keynote Sherrl Nussbaum Beach and the local workshop presenters.Makes the long hours and travel well worthwhile! We all look forward to next week when the conference moves north to Wellington, Palmerston North and New Plymouth.

Categories: Education | Events | TUANZ policy

Open source in education

Posted Thu 15 March 2007 @ 5:13 p.m. by Sarah

The Ministry of Education is in the final phase of negotiating a multi-million dollar deal with Microsoft and others for school software, but what about Open Source? Any room for that in the deal? Senior ICT consultant Douglas Harré says that while the MOE has invested in some Open Source applications, desktop software from Microsoft and Apple makes sense for the majority of schools at the present time. In New Zealand there are 2700 schools with 750,000 kids, 45,000 teachers and over 160,000 computers....

Categories: Education | Vendors

NZ Years Behind Australia in Fixing Mobile Termination Rip-Off

Posted Thu 15 March 2007 @ 6:49 a.m. by Ernie

While the sorry saga of New Zealand's regulatory attempts to curb grossly excessive mobile termination rates continues to languish, the Australian regulator yesterday struck another blow in favour of consumers.The ACCC yesterday released a report in which it described the latest offer from Optus of a rate of 12c per minute as "at the high end of the scale." The ACCC believes the true cost of termination is in the range of 5c-12c, and has had the industry on a glide path downward since 2004.Contrast...

Categories: Regulatory | TUANZ policy | Wireless carriers

Gaming in the classroom

Posted Wed 14 March 2007 @ 3:28 p.m. by Sarah

High school teacher Andrew Carswell has just posted the following statement from his workshop presentation '3D Gaming in Education & the Disengagement Spiral'. "The cookies on my daughter's computer know more about her interests than her teachers do."Carswell's workshop is part of the TUANZ Education Conference which began on Monday in Invercargill and is in Christchurch today.According to Carswell online gaming is changing the way kids process information and if teachers can incorporate it's...

Categories: Education

Innovation at Canterbury Health

Posted Wed 14 March 2007 @ 2:12 p.m. by Ernie

Canterbury District Health Board is out there doing interesting stuff in IT. I called to see them this afternoon on a range of issues.They are using Vocera - a wireless based system. It's just the thing for the hundreds of medical staff who populate large hospitals and used to get lost for days at a time. With a hands free, completely automated, voice-recogntion based call, any staff member carrying a Vocera device around their neck can asceertain the availability and location of any...

Categories: Education | Innovation | Vendors

Content no longer king?

Posted Tue 13 March 2007 @ 2:43 p.m. by Sarah

What happens to teachers in a Web 2.0 world if the knowledge they have spent years acquiring is no longer enough to teach the children in their classroom?That was the question the TUANZ Education Conference keynote speaker Sheryl Naussbaum Beach posed at her workshop in Invercargill yesterday. “Content is not going to be king – what’s going to be more important is knowing how to access and find that knowledge.”In other words, it will be up to the teachers to show the students how to negotiate their...

Categories: Education | Events

Education conference has begun

Posted Mon 12 March 2007 @ 10:02 a.m. by Sarah

Invercargill is the first city to host the 2007 Education Conference. Follow its progress online at the wiki.International keynote Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has opened the conference, with - among a whole lot of mindboggling stats - the following two obsevations:The number of the text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population on the planet.Half of what students learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of their study. According to Nussbaum-Beach...

Categories: Education

Broadband Stats - Optimism Shattered

Posted Sat 10 March 2007 @ 1:04 p.m. by Ernie

Oops! "Downstream" was excited by this week's announcement about Statistics NZ's survey claiming New Zealand had reached 19th in the OECD broadband uptake table after languishing for years at number 23.Sadly, it seems Statistics NZ were wrong. Their survey includes 3G mobile broadband access, an extremely expensive premium product that the OECD does not include. Most people would not regard it as a direct substitute, hence the OECD declining to include it in their survey.You can make a case to measure...

Categories: Fixed line carriers | ISPs

Broadband uptake in top 20

Posted Thu 8 March 2007 @ 8:42 a.m. by Sarah

New Zealand now ranks 19th for broadband uptake in the OECD, up from 22nd place, according to a survey released by Statistics NZ. The number of broadband subscribers increased from 11.5 per 100 inhabitants to 14.7 per 100 in the six months between 31 March and the end of September 2006. The OECD average for broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants was 15.5 at June 2006.There were a total of 33.3 internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants in New Zealand at the end of September 2006, compared with...

Categories: ISPs

Regulator Gives Telstra a Cuff Around the Ears - ATUG Conference

Posted Thu 8 March 2007 @ 8:25 a.m. by Ernie

ACCC boss Graeme Samuel gave Telstra a piece of his mind at the ATUG conference, on in Sydney yesterday and today. In another round in the battle of words Samuel gave the incumbent a strong serve for its "noise and bluster.”At issue is the rollout of ADSL2. Telstra admits it has the ability given 48 hours notice to flick a switch and supply ADSL2 to 90% of the Aussie population. But it wants regulatory certainty first in the form of an assurance that the ACCC will not "appropriate...

Categories: Events | Regulatory

Fibre loop completed

Posted Wed 7 March 2007 @ 2:15 p.m. by Sarah

A fibre optic ring connecting the lower South Island has been completed by Telecom. The $16 million project consists of 133km of fibre optic cable between Invercargill and Queenstown and 92km of cable between Fairlie and Twizel. Telecom Network Planner Robert Short says the new network has been ‘lit up’ and is now carrying increasing volumes of telecommunications traffic. A series of new Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) terminals have been installed at telephone exchanges in ten...

Categories: Fixed line carriers

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