“Telecom’s strong preference is to align the interests of its equity and debt holders with those of the Government and New Zealanders,” said Paul Reynolds, CEO, Telecom. “The Government’s UFB initiative will fundamentally reshape the structure of the entire telecommunications industry in New Zealand and Telecom is therefore undertaking a thorough assessment of the merits of structural separation.

“In making a thorough assessment of structural separation we need to have a detailed understanding of the regulatory environment, and this warrants detailed discussion and analysis with Government before any decisions regarding its viability can be made,” he said.

“We are conscious that we should all be focused on how best to create New Zealand’s fibre future.

“However Telecom is required by legislation to deliver significant system and technology projects envisaged for a pre-fibre world. A large proportion of these projects must be deployed this year, so it seems sensible at this time to reassess these projects to avoid significant congestion and waste.

“As a result we have asked the Minister to consider a variation on three components of Telecom’s Undertakings that we believe will no longer be relevant in a fibre future.

“These three amendments will not impact on the service levels experienced by our end user and industry customers, and will not detract from the EOI level playing field. Rather, they reflect how fast the policy and technology environment is evolving in telecommunications.

“In these three areas Telecom, industry participants and New Zealand consumers face significant costs and risks of disruption that were not foreseeable at the time the commitments were made. They also lock Telecom, the industry and the Government into some choices which should be considered as part of the UFB initiative and the potential structural separation of Telecom,” he said.

The proposed changes are to:

- Suspend the forced bulk migration of existing broadband customers onto a new copper-based broadband service. We will, however, continue to supply this new broadband service to all new customers;

- Remove the requirement for Telecom to migrate 17,000 customers onto a new VoIP over copper service by the end of this year;

- Remove the requirement for Telecom to build a new set of wholesale systems that are not consistent with the industry structure implied by UFB.

Telecom’s fibre-to-the-node programme is not impacted by the variation requests.

Call me cynical, but who cares if a 2 1/2 year old can push pretty icons on the iPad. I’m sure my cat can do the same thing. I am so over hearing about the iPad. Yes, it may have it’s use for a minority of people. Personally I can’t justify spending over NZD$1000 on something I can’t pull apart and upgrade the internals on. Surely I am not alone here.

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In the latest move, Vodafone is saying it will pay Telecom XT customers termination fees for them if they switch to the Vodafone network.

This comes a day after Telecom had issues with 111 calls not being connected in Auckland.

Paul Brislen, Vodafone spokesman, said the company would refund any Telecom customers penalised for switching mobile phone providers.

Under the deal to be announced this morning, angry Telecom customers can change to Vodafone and keep the same phone number – and be credited the amount they are charged for breaking their contract.

Source: New Zealand Herald

Today I ask for your opinion on an idea I’ve had regarding a new podcast channel on XTN. I would love to hear your thoughts. It’s still in the planning stages but let me know what you think.

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He also stated that Alcatel-Lucent had been ‘Put on notice’ however when asked what that meant the question was not really answered.

It appears that, while Alcatel-Lucent has been put on notice. No dead lines were given to Alcatel-Lucent in regards to a definite date in which the issues needed to be fixed. This would point to there not being any repercussions if a speedy solution to the network problems was not found.

Paul Reynolds did state that the resignation of CTO, Frank Mount was in direct response to the XT network failures. He was unable to comment, regarding the resignation of Alcatel-Lucent NZ CEO Steve Lowe or whether Steve resigned in response to the XT network issues.

Telecom stated that if customers wished to break their contracts with the company, it would be dealt with on a per customer basis.

Paul Reynolds stated that Telecom customers, were the ones to decide if the XT network and Telecom has had it’s last chance as far as the XT network was concerned.

No guarantees have been given that the network would not fail again. Reynolds denied that only having the two RNCs’ played a role in the network outages. When questioned as to Vodafone having six in NZ, Reynolds said the two were sufficient based on the number of customers. However he says the company has plans to have at least another four RNCs in place by the end of the year.

Telecom New Zealand CEO, Paul Reynolds accepted the resignation of Frank Mount this morning.

“In the interests of our customers, our team and New Zealand, I have regretfully accepted Frank’s resignation,” said Paul Reynolds, CEO, Telecom.

In a media release Telecom said that, David Havercroft will assume the responsibility for all network and IT operations from today and CFO Russ Houlden will carry interim responsibility for our Shared Services operations and Technology Strategy

From what I’ve been hearing, other than this not being available in New Zealand. The phone is not compatible with the Telecom XT network, but is compatible with the Vodafone NZ network.

Will Vodafone bring this phone into New Zealand ? I’m not sure. I haven’t yet seen anything from either Telecom or Vodafone regarding this.

I invite either Telecom NZ or Vodafone NZ to comment as to whether we will see this phone available in New Zealand anytime soon.

Exciting stuff happening around here at the moment. One of them being the new Xunil Tech News Podcast  – A weekly look at tech news from New Zealand and around the world.

Lots of planning and organisation going into this and so far everything is on track, except for a couple of WordPress plugin issues I’m having but hopefully they’ll get sorted in the near future and neither effect the podcast directly.

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