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| Mobile -something absolutely stinks! |
| Posted Tue 19 August 2008 @ 8:08 p.m. by Ernie |
It does, and its right up your nose! At 6.15 this morning I left home to attend the TUANZ After 5s Breakfast hosted by Agile. Bleary eyed in the dark I put a bag of household rubbish in the boot to drop off at the bottom of the drive, then promptly forgot about it. My car was not a nice environment by 7pm!
That's a true tale, but it wasn't what I meant to blog about.
Far more seriously, something smells equally bad in mobile telephony. John Drinnan's piece in today's Herald sums it up. How come NZ Comms, aka Econet, still hasn't launched?
Run a Google search on "Econet New Zealand" and you'll find 45,000 entries. The company has had a permanent presence in New Zealand since, from my recollection, 2000. The official MED list of carriers has it listed effective March 2002. That's 6 to 8 years since it announced its intention to become New Zealand's third mobile operator.
Wouldn't you say after all that time, with the launch now scheduled for 2009 at earliest, something is wrong?
Scapegoats abound. Radio co-location hasn't been regulated properly; neither has national roaming; there are issues with the RMA; interconnection took forever to settle because of a massive power imbalance; the government stuffed up on mobile termination twice rejecting the regulator's recommendations. All of these assertions have considerable substance, though we could argue all night as to which barriers have been the most pertinent.
And we can also debate whether NZ Comms’ lobbying style and commercial approach has, or has not, been optimal in terms of helping its own cause.
But the bottom line is this: Eight years on NZ Comms hasn't launched and doesn't look like its about to. Neither has anyone else. TelstraClear has abandoned mobile meanwhile. And the long-promised MVNOs haven't materialised (see Sarah's blog of recent days.)
And despite recent apparent improvement in the OECD stats, there iare suggestions of pressure being applied to the statisticians to adjust the methodology in order to show NZ in a more favourable light.
While all this has happened Telecom has pedaled furiously to catch up technologically, but sadly in neutral. And surprise, none of the numerous other mobile operators who have built solid businesses around the Pacific in countries a fraction our size have knocked on New Zealand's door to enter this market.
All that mounts up to some serious systemic failure, be it commercial, regulatory, or both.
Its good that Minister Cunliffe is asking questions. New Zealanders are paying dearly for a market far less competitive than we are entitled to expect. A circuit breaker is needed to bring this to a head - now! |
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| Categories: Events | Innovation | Light relief | Regulatory | TUANZ policy | Wireless carriers |
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