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News

• Wholesale broadband price cuts passed on to consumers

  ​The Commerce Commission has released a study that shows 90 percent of the recent reductions in Chorus’ regulated wholesale broadband prices have flowed through to consumers.

• Draft ruling says Telecom targeted competitive threat

  Telecom's motives in offering loyalty discounts to wholesale customers were questioned more strongly in a draft copy of a decision by Telecom regulator the Independent Oversight Group (IOG) than in the final public version, released yesterday.
  The IOG, which is charged with monitoring Telecom's operational separation undertakings, refers in both versions of its decision to an executive paper from Telecom Wholesale. That paper contains comments that, in the IOG’s view, establish that the discount offers were constructed to prevent access seekers from using local loop unbundling (LLU).
  Yesterday, the IOG ruled the dicount scheme constituted a "non-trivial" breach of Telecom's separation undertakings, a finding that could lead to a maximum fine of $10 million.
  A draft version of the decision, however, is much more strongly worded, saying the executive paper, from which the loyalty scheme sprang, "made it plain that the intent was to lock in a segment of customers who do not intend to unbundle and to provide Telecom with a competitive alternative to UCLL being provided by Vodafone and Orcon… “
  In the final copy of the IOG report, this was changed to “However, the effect of the loyalty offers was to enter into contracts with a segment of customers … “
  Telecom Wholesale denies it deliberately designed the loyalty discounts so that certain service providers, those that had already invested heavily in local loop unbundling, couldn’t take them up. In the draft, Telecom says the offers were designed to meet the request of a group of customers with a pressing need.
  However, the draft says, Telecom Wholesale “did not provide convincing evidence of such requests.
  “The offers were in effect discriminating against those who had participated in unbundling,” the final copy of the IOG decision finds.
  According to the IOG, unbundling is a “fundamental plank of operational separation” as mandated by the government.

• Telcos slug it out over new discount offer

  Telecom has launched yet another wholesale discount offer to the market, but rivals claim the deal is anti-competitive.

• Opinion: Holding hands while kicking each other under the table

  Vodafone and Slingshot are agreeing to hold wholesale hands whilst kicking each other competitively under the table.

• Telecom looks to UK for sharpness, customer focus

  Telecom Wholesale is continuing to look overseas for key executives as it prepares for operational separation later this year.

• ‘Retail-minus’ approach haunts Telco Bill

  As you would expect, the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee reported back to the house a very long and detail Telecommunications Amendment Bill. It's 143 pages worth of deliberations — some good, others showing too much desire to compromise and rely on the mythical power of commercial arrangements.

• Three-way separation for Telecom: Select Committee

  The Parliamentary Finance and Expenditure Select Committee released its Amendment to the Telecommunications Act 2001 today, a week ahead of its formal reporting to parliament.

• Telecom backs down over broadband limit

  Confusion over limits on the so-called unlimited retail and wholesale broadband plans, the Go Large and WBS Cabriolet respectively, has led Telecom to remove a contentious hourly data cap.

• Telecom rejigs wholesale and loosens broadband brake

  Telecom has rejigged its wholesale broadband service with three different dimensioning options on the ATM backhaul. Wholesale customers can now choose either 16, 24 or 32kbit/s per user on CUBS (commercial unbundled bitstream service), according to Telecom wholesale spokeswoman Melanie Marshall.

• Telecom could have dragged its heels: Gattung

  Telecom's chief executive Theresa Gattung announced her own industry stocktake at an address to the Telecommunications Users' Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) in Wellington yesterday, pointing to a large number of developments since the government issued its appraisal of the situation six months ago.

• Transparency as important as wholesale separation

  One of the less obvious advantages of broadband is it relieves companies’ bookshelves of weighty tomes on trends in the telco industry, says Ovum telco strategy practice leader Mike Cansfield. Industry monitor Ovum now provides most of its detailed content online, with only short summary reports delivered in print, he says.

• Some ISPs are more equal than others

  The debate over Telecom’s wholesale services boils down to one simple word: equivalence. It’s what every ISP is asking for, it’s what Telecom talks about, it’s what the government wants. Everyone just wants to be treated the same way as everyone else. Unfortunately it’s not that easy.

• New Telecom full-speed DSL plans revealed

  Telecom has changed its entire range of DSL broadband plans and removed speed-throttling.

• InternetNZ pushes for UK-style separation of Telecom’s operations

  InternetNZ is backing full operational separation of Telecom in its submission on the Telecommunications Bill.

• Wholehearted wholesale?

  I met Telecom’s new general manager of wholesale, Matt Crockett, the other day and I must say I’m quite heartened by our conversation.