In case you were wondering. The Labour government has zero interest in improving the broadband situation in this country.

This report on the line just shows that the whole operational separation is a political exercise. The reports here were obtained under the official informations act…

The report, dated five weeks before Telecom publicly announced the extensiveness of its FTTN plans and three weeks before the release of the final LLU STD, advised Cunliffe that FTTN is generally considered to be “the death-knell” for a LLU regime. Written by MED manager ICT regulatory team Reg Hammond, the report advised that a gradual deployment of FTTN is “the most effective means of maintaining efficient investment incentives” for industry players.

If the Commission made a slight change to the STD without public consultation, it would be immediately picked up by the industry and would be akin to an announcement by the government that it intended to accelerate FTTN. “While this would stall investment by access seekers in LLU it may be more palatable than allowing access seekers to invest in LLU and then making an announcement at some later stage,” reads the document

Following the official news of the extent of Telecom’s cabinetisation plans, Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds sent a letter to Cunliffe saying that he was “genuinely taken aback” by the industry’s negative reaction. “As such, we think the accusation that we have been hiding information and gaming the situation is completely baseless and unfair,” reads the letter obtained under the Official Information Act.”

Couple that with this on stuff, with IDC stating that operationally separating Telecom won’t reduce the incumbents dominance. (I’ve written before on the unreasonablemen.net about how markets operate)

In case you forgot, its an election year….

So just a bit of time to ask yourself, has all this kerfuffle changed your perception of Telecom? and …while you were focusing on hating Telecom did you forget the promised tax cuts? that AU GDP and standard of living had gone up again, that interest rates had sky rocketed, that kiwisavers a huge flop (in terms of implementation), that compliance costs on SMB’s have gone up…..hmmm interesting…..Maybe the Government got what they wanted after all….

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