Telecom’s latest addition to its board last year lambasted the country’s broadband infrastructure at a TUANZ event.
The company announced yesterday that Dr Sachio Semmoto has been appointed to its board.
For the uninitiated, Semmoto, a Japanese telecommunications entrepreneur, was the keynote speaker at TUANZ’s Telecommunication Day II last August.
And it is here that he described New Zealand’s broadband situation “as very retarded”, as reported in this Computerworld article (we’ll forgive them for getting the name of the event slightly wrong).
Eagle-eyed journalists have also pointed to this interview with the New Zealand Herald in which Semmoto labelled New Zealand’s broadband 'pitiful' and which spurred this blog.
Even Telecom chairman Wayne Boyd alluded to Semmoto’s previous remarks, with this statement: “With Telecom now rolling out a nationwide investment programme bringing faster broadband to New Zealanders, Dr Semmoto is ideally placed to bring these perspectives to our board. Indeed, he has long been a passionate contributor to the broadband debate here in New Zealand.”
Let’s hope that with such an outspoken critic of the country’s broadband infrastructure on board, it will indeed help Telecom become a champion of world-class broadband in New Zealand.
And while on the topic of thought-provoking speakers, don’t forget to register for our next Telecommunications Day on May 12.