Vodafone NZ lobbies for national network consortium

bealtine

Vodafone NZ lobbies for national network consortium - report Monday 4 May 2009


Vodafone New Zealand is trying to persuade the NZ government to establish a national consortium that would own telecommunications infrastructure, Business Day reports, citing an unnamed source close to the negotiations. Vodafone chose not to detail its proposal in its public submission to the Economic Development Ministry on the government's NZD 1.5 billion broadband plan, opting instead to lobby communications minister Steven Joyce in private. Vodafone's proposal would see Chorus and TelstraClear put their network assets into a new business that would be jointly owned by the three telecommunication companies and the Crown. The NZ government and Vodafone would contribute cash in return for their equity stake. Vodafone was looking to give an undertaking to the government that the group would deliver fibre-to-the-home services within ten years.

bk

Yes, I've been suggesting something similar for Ireland for a while now.

It is clear why Vodafone would be interested in this. Must people don't seem to realise this, but the mobile phone companies will need a very deep fibre optic network in order to deliver high speed data services to their mobile customers, specially with devices like the iPhone, Pre and with the upcoming LTE standard, data usage on mobile networks is about to explode.

However the mobile phone companies don't really gain much advantage from this expensive infrastructure, other then needing to have it to be part of the game, so rather then each mobileco duplicating their fibre networks, they would rather just share in a common, carrier neutral fibre network and therefore keep costs down.

It is exactly the same for the mobileco's here. I'd also say the smaller ISP's like Smart, Magnet, BT, would jump at such an opportunity, to trade their smaller fibre networks, for access to a much larger national fibre network.

UPC might be somewhat hesitant, given how much they have already invested in their own network, but if it looks like it really was taking off I'd imagine they'd get involved.

Of course the government owned assets should be included, including the MANS, ESB and Bord Gais networks and importantly this company should be given the rights to continue expand the network across government owned assets (along electricity wires, electricity poles, ducts, etc.)

Tom Young

In an article from Digital Ireland (last Thursday) ALTO propose the same concept. This followed on from a conference they ran last year, where the former NZ Minister for Comms spoke.