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Friday, January 26, 2007

Resistance to Telecom is futile


I love it when the Telecom Borg scores an own goal, and their PR nightmare with Jenny Gibbs is hilarious. Sadly rich white woman wins again, but for a second the Borg looked stupid.

Telecom finally organises broadband for multimillionaire
Telecom's rivals flocked to the smart frontdoor of multimillionaire Jenny Gibbs yesterday to offer her broadband, only to be pipped at the post by the giant telco. The firm moved swiftly to get its service to the unhappy arts patron on the same day she went public about waiting two years to get broadband in her Paritai Drive home. Mrs Gibbs had been told that the exchange in her area had no extra capacity. But soon after yesterday's Herald article appeared, Telecom connected Mrs Gibbs as its rivals rushed to her dress-circle street in Orakei to show off their alternatives. Phone and internet companies Vodafone and Woosh parked outside her house, testing equipment to see if she could get their wireless broadband services, and offered their own broadband options.

9 Comments:

At 26/1/07 7:40 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You slag a pretty much Kiwi owned Telecom off - and probably use a worldwide dominating company like Vodafone. Vodafone NZ borrowed massively off Vodafone UK to set up here (like they needed to)- They make a profit, but it all goes into interest to pay off Vodafone UK. Not to tax in NZ. Who's ripping who off.

Telecom don't sponsor a Formula One car or Every top football team or shitty local league teams.

The more you slag Telecom off, the more money my dad loses in his shares.

GO BOMMER!

 
At 26/1/07 10:30 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is she a bad person in some way - or just rich and white. I fail to see how being rich or white (or both) makes it ok for people to make jibes. You can envy without being nasty about it. I've seen her on TV a couple of times and I thought she seemed ok.

It is ridiculous that a main street in a main town can’t get broadband. Seems a good thing to me that she exposed how backward telecom are.

I lived in South Auckland and I had broadband 9 years ago, why should people in more expensive areas accept lower services to people in poorer areas.

 
At 27/1/07 2:13 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To anon above,

If your dad is dumb enough to own shares in Telecom he deserves to lose money. Yes, they might be kiwi owned, but that doesnt stop them from being one of the worst telecommunications providers in the western world.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/3905450a11275.html

 
At 27/1/07 10:16 am, Blogger SamClemenz said...

Bomber, unfortunately this story only represents the tip of the Iceburg regarding how Telecom manipulates profits and monopolises the market in New Zealand.
The short story is this. Telecom maintains a tight strangle hold on it's wholly owned "Local Exchange" network in New Zealand. They have prevented competition effectively by refusing to give any other companies access to the vital last link in their network at wholesale prices.

The cost of setting up a local exchange network these days is astronomical even for companies like Vodafone who are quite wealthy, because they require setting up digital radio on building tops, or fiber optic cables under the streets mingled with City Works.

Over the years Telecom has bled the NZ market to death through extremely high cost for everything, toll calls, line rental, equipment rental, and line maintainence costs while not doing much to upgrade the network even in the main centres. They have spent minimal maintainence costs and banked the profits. After all, they bought the network cheaply that had already been built and paid for by the New Zealand tax payer, so the big investment to build a network wasn't required.

When Telecom got privatised by Rogernomics - Prebble, Ruth Richardson and Co... They effectively handed the owners a license to rape you and to print money. That's why Telecom has been so reluctant to share the pie and allow anyone to come in and compete with them. If you are a Lion guarding a big flock of Sheep, you spend a lot of time chasing other lions away from your food source right?

So until recently Telecom could just tell you to piss off if you didn't like what they offered. Now that some "other" companies are making a dash into the "Wireless" market's Telecom is being slowly forced to be more competitive, but can still withold access to their network to those companies by keeping the pricing artificially high for the last critical link those companies need to complete their own networks.

Only when the government steps in and completely regulate the Telecommunications industry in New Zealand, forcing telecom to provide wholesale pricing to their competitiors, will their be "true" competition in "real" broadband Internet service here.

The current "Broadband Service Offering" in most cases outside of the main inner city switch centres is a total joke, and only a slight enhancement to "Dial up" service. You can't even run a true DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service on copper wire. Copper wire is an analog service not digital, and Telecom's network is still predominantly copper wire outside the main city centres.
Telecom's services are propped up by smoke and mirrors and rely on a dumb public that doesn't know the difference. They are betting on the government not going the full route to force regulation and wholesale pricing on them in order to keep the money printing machine going.

 
At 28/1/07 4:22 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sam

this story only represents the tip of the Iceburg regarding how Telecom manipulates profits and monopolises the market in New Zealand

Completely right. Good post.

The number of errors on the lines that Telecom provides to its competitors is ridiculous. The required minimum error rate for those lines is a joke, and Telecom makes sure those lines never have errors far below that minimum, "inadvertently" slowing down rival companies' internet access to a comparitive crawl.

Anon

The more you slag Telecom off, the more money my dad loses in his shares.

Maybe your dad should be profiteering on the Iraq war instead then. All those poor shareholders, how much money do they stand to lose if the US pulls out of Iraq and goes home without attacking Iran?!

I'm sure your dad's heart bleeds for those people. I'm full of sympathy for him. I would be just gutted if he lost everything.

 
At 28/1/07 7:49 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't be so harsh. My dad is an elderly man who's lost all all his money. He went out one morning after I told him to put all his retirement savings on Kiwi calling. Telecom's share price plummeted, 'Kiwi Calling' came in 3 lengths clear in the 5th at Ellerslie paying 20 to 1. I'm just doing what I can to help the poor man out. But geez, you 'against anything' guys are so much fun to argue with. haha.

 
At 29/1/07 9:42 am, Blogger SamClemenz said...

Against anything - please! Sorry about your Dad, it's nothing personal against his investment portfolio, just stating some facts that John Q. Public doesn't understand about Telecom as the smoke and mirrors leader in the Southern Hemisphere Telco department.
Darn little errors anyway, they spread like cockroaches over a copper wire network - that could have been a digital one by now, had upgrades replaced shovelling all that money from false profits into preferred accounts. Funny how that works!
Now they have to compete and by gosh, Theresa doesn't understand that word, and the new Chairman has his head buried in a good book sound asleep.
Maybe if the Carlyle Group buys their Directory business for $2-billion, they can get back on track to squander some more money for your Dad instead of turning the company around and facing the 21st Century from a strong position instead of trying to back into it as is their current plan.
Dump Gatang and the company may lose it's resistance to change and move forward. Keep her and continue to stifle the country and any healthy competition.
After all, the Carlyle group is always happy to oblidge when it comes to buying data bases of ripe information, aren't they H.W. Bush, Saudi Royal Family, and the 2 or so dozen other AIPAC, and Neoconservative members and chief stockholder's?
Your Dad will be in well protected hands with those guys!
Try Sea-Biscuit in the 3rd!

 
At 30/1/07 11:07 am, Blogger SamClemenz said...

Snigie Said;
"I love how we all forget that it was telecom who was having no issues raping our parents generation when the were no competitors with their massive bills. fuck telecom, let em burn in the free economy."

Just deserves! Unfortuntaely NZ needs a strong Telecommunications provider in this day and age. It hurts us all if they don't change!

The question is "How do you convert a bloodsucker to a blood donor?"

I do have an idea but it's long and arduous!

 
At 2/2/07 9:17 am, Blogger SamClemenz said...

Geez Snigie & Nobody, we must have started a fire in the Ivory Tower! I heard this moning that Gatang is gone at the end of March.
Let's put a management team together and turn the old battlehsip around!

 

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