I love Twitter. As a former reporter, it’s the replacement news feed that I’d been looking for.

It wasn’t always that way, however. When I first heard of Twitter I wasn’t that fussed. Sounds like ICQ or any of the other instant messaging platforms, I thought. I’d used ICQ extensively in a distributed newsroom setting so we could all stay in touch and because we all used it for everything, even across-the-room chat, those who worked remotely were included in the conversation.

But yet another version of that? “Meh”, I thought. Of course, Twitter differs fundamentally from instant message platforms and it wasn’t until someone re-tweeted a photo of a bunch of people standing on the wing of a plane that was floating in the Hudson River in New York that I realised this was the news feed I’d been dreaming of.

Someone on a rescue boat had taken a photo and posted it straight to Twitter. It was at least half an hour before the New Zealand news websites started carrying ‘breaking news’ banners about a plane crashing in New York, but I knew they were all OK and I had proof.

It was a seminal moment, but Twitter doesn’t just allow me to see what other people are doing right this second – far from it. It’s also my new favourite search engine and the single best way to get in touch with a corporation.

I’ll give you an example – I went to Hong Kong for business about two years ago and when I got to the hotel I couldn’t find my credit card. “Great”, I thought. “I’ve left it in the chemist at the airport in Auckland. Brilliant.”

I called Kiwibank, but of course it was after hours so nobody could take my call. I wanted the card blocked until I figured out where it was, so I tweeted and Kiwibank came straight back – yes, they could help. They called me, we verified identities and the card was blocked.

I couldn’t have done that without Twitter and these days I try not to deal with companies that don’t have a Twitter account. All too often companies seem to put barriers in the way of doing business with them – Twitter cuts through all of the rigmarole in a heartbeat.

It’s also incredibly fast and closes the gap between customer and CEO from a few weeks to mere seconds. In the old days you’d get poor service, you’d demand to speak with a supervisor, you’d be fobbed off and ultimately you’d writea letter. In due course that would find its way to someone senior and you’d get a response, or not if they didn’t think it worth the bother.

These days that’s all gone. Responses have to be immediate and clearly thought out or they become the stuff of legend. Dominos Pizza, United Airlines, Comcast and WalMart have all been caught with their social media pants down in recent years, and closer to home we’ve seen local companies also try to bluff and bluster their way through what is, at its heart, an exercise in customer relationship management.

Social media puts consumers in the driver’s seat. No more interactive voice recognition, or hold music. No more fobbing off and form letters that go nowhere. Any company that ignores social media is ignoring its customers and that’s a business that I don’t want to have anything to do with.

Years ago I asked my dentist about flossing. I’m from the UK and we didn’t have such things when I was a kid. “Which teeth do I floss?” I asked. “Only the ones you want to keep,” he said. Social media is like that. Which customers should you talk to? Only the ones you want to keep.

ABOUT PAUL BRISLEN//

Paul Brislen was the Telecommunication Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) chief executive. He left the post in May 2014. Craig Young will be his replacement.

There are a number of people on the internet who seem to think the idea of building a fibre network to three quarters of the country’s buildings is a bad idea. I can only assume they don’t use the internet today and if they do, they certainly didn’t use it when we were all on dial-up.

I’m reminded in many ways of the early days of ADSL broadband. Back in 1999 there were plenty of nay-sayers who couldn’t understand why having ‘always on’ access to the internet was a good thing. They couldn’t see the value in having a faster internet connection because their dial-up connection was good enough.

And in many respects it was. I worked from home on a dial up connection and then on an early ADSL1 service from Telecom that gave me 600MB of data to use every month. I managed to cope with that because in 1999 the amount of video content was limited, my applications (such as they were) tended towards the minimalist because the bandwidth constraints were so great, and nobody really used the internet for anything more than email and bulletin boards.

But I knew then that I wanted more and that if I had more I could do more. TUANZ put together a three-day session to discuss what opportunities lay on the other side of ubiquitous, cheap access to very fast internet speeds and we wrote a book (‘Survival of the Fastest’) all about what was, back then, science fiction.

Wouldn’t it be good if I could connect with all my friends as they were travelling around the place so I would know who was nearby so I could have a coffee with them? Wouldn’t it be good if I could put on a pair of goggles and see the Coliseum in Rome as it was 2000 years ago? Wouldn’t it be great if I could video-conference not only from the giant telepresence suite at work but also from my home PC?

We dreamt up the likes of Facebook, 4Square, Google Goggles and Skype but without any real thought to make them into real products (aside from Mark Billinghurst who now runs augmented reality company HitLab) but we knew that if we had access to good connectivity, these things would be possible.

A fibre network that connects most of us is the start of the future for New Zealand. It will change the way we communicate with each other. It will enhance our business opportunities. It will improve our health system, give us access to better education, redefine the way we as citizens interact with our government at all levels and hopefully a whole raft of things we haven’t thought of yet because we’re stuck in our 2Mbit/s world.

I could use a 10Mbit/s symmetrical connection today. I’d jump at the chance to get a better upload speed because suddenly I need it. Tomorrow I’ll be looking for 50Mbit/s and the day after 100Mbit/s. My home connection is no longer just something that I use – now my kids use it, my wife uses it, all our devices are constantly going out seeking updates and, if Google gets its way, my house will shortly be connecting to the world, not to mention my car.

In the next decade we’ll see 4K television become more accessible, we’ll see home automation take off, we’ll see the ‘internet of things’ become a reality and for all of that to happen we need fibre.

The problem as I see it is not that “nobody really wants this stuff” as some would have you believe, but rather that not everyone will have access to it. This isn’t a problem of the government demanding industry build a white elephant – it’s a problem of haves and have-nots.

I’d like to see technology become a key issue in the upcoming election. I want New Zealand to do better, to have more and to foot it with the best of them. It’s high time we had a government that saw the opportunity rather than the cost of all this.

ABOUT PAUL BRISLEN//

Paul Brislen is the Telecommunication Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) chief executive.

Telecom has won the second 700MHz spectrum auction with a bid of $83 million for a block of 2x5MHz spectrum. I’m sure nobody at Telecom HQ is celebrating, however, because it’s paid around four times as much as it had for the 2x15MHz block it bought last year.

Paying $66m for 2x15MHz was a reasonable amount. It wasn’t cheap, but it certainly wasn’t up there with the kinds of stupidity we saw in the UK and Europe during the 3G spectrum craze of the early 2000s.

All three mobile operators were happy enough with the $22m they paid per block. I can’t imagine how Simon Moutter and co are feeling right now, but probably they look a bit green. $22m was OK, but $83m? That’s another matter entirely.

Telecom didn’t even want to bid on the remaining block. They argued that the last 5MHz pair should be left on the table for another round of bidding in a few years’ time when 2Degrees could, presumably, afford to buy it.

That made a lot of sense. TUANZ argued against having an auction at all – each of the three network operators should have been given 2x15MHz so as to preserve the competitive market in the 700MHz space, but if we had to have one, any excess spectrum left over shouldn’t be flogged off just to raise cash. Sadly, that’s just what the government has done.
Telecom was forced to take part even though it wasn’t keen because it couldn’t allow Vodafone to simply walk away with the extra spectrum. Vodafone, likewise, couldn’t let Telecom have it cheaply either, and unfortunately we’ve seen the telco equivalent of the Cold War end in a huge cost.

Worse, when you look at the overall spectrum holdings you’ll find that 2Degrees has just on 100MHz of spectrum, Telecom has double that and Vodafone has nearly 300MHz of spectrum available to it right across the managed spectrum range.

That imbalance means Vodafone and Telecom already have a huge advantage over 2Degrees when it comes to the total spectrum market and that’s going to be a problem if we want a truly competitive landscape.

Should we care that Telecom has paid a fortune for the spectrum? Surely that’s its problem and good on the government for getting the best dollar for the tax payer? Well yes and no. Telecom will have to find that money somewhere and I’m guessing it wasn’t down the back of a couch. It probably will have to come either from the existing capex budget, which means something else will go by the board, or it’ll be raised from the customers.

That much money would have paid for (by my calculation) an additional 160 cellsites around the country, which would have been very nice to see in rural New Zealand. Instead, Telecom will have a nice piece of paper that says yes, it can build a cellphone network in the 700MHz range.

The good news is this isn’t a done deal. The Commerce Commission still has to assess whether or not the extra spectrum breaches the Commerce Act in terms of market dominance. We’d argue that yes, it does and I’d go further and say that both the telcos and the customers would be better off if we set aside this auction and leave the last 5MHz pair on the shelf for the time being.

I know there are plenty of you yet to be convinced there are any benefits to living in Auckland, but that doesn’t stop the migration to the city being well above national average. As a home owner in Auckland house prices is the first thing that springs to mind. You can get much more house for your dollar in Hamilton or Dunedin than in central Auckland and if the work you do is flexible enough, why would you pay more for office space in the CBD?

Lifestyle choices, cost of living, commuting times, there are many reasons to move out of the big cities and now we can add “getting fibre to the home” to the list.

Currently, we have four LFCs (Local Fibre Companies) building the network. Chorus has the bulk of the build – Auckland and Wellington, predominantly – but in Northland the job has been given to Northpower, in the Waikato it’s gone to Ultra Fast Fibre and in Christchurch and surrounding areas the network is being rolled out by Enable.

All three LFCs are ahead of projected rollout dates and Northpower looks set to finish Whangarei by the middle of next year.

Today you can get UFB connectivity in Tokoroa, Cambridge, Nelson, Rolleston and a raft of other smaller centres around the country. You cannot get UFB at my house in central Auckland and won’t for several months, if not years to come.

I understand. Not everyone can be first and someone’s got to wait. By the end of 2019 we should all have access to UFB and that’s a very good thing.

This transition period is a golden opportunity for regional New Zealand to really get stuck in to the whole digital economy and to prove that you don’t need to be based in central Auckland to run a world-wide business.

For far too long that wasn’t the case. If you wanted first world connectivity, you needed to be based in a central city office block and pay extortionate rates for fibre.

The cracks in that model started to show some years ago when Wellington City Council and others set up CityLink, a “metro area network” around Wellington’s central business district. Competition on fibre pricing meant better service and better pricing, albeit for a lucky few.

Now we’re deploying fibre to schools, hospitals and businesses and soon we’ll be deploying it to most of the nation’s homes as well.

It’s an important project – a once-in-a-lifetime network upgrade that will set us up for a long time to come.

Fibre is very much the best way forward in this regard – it’s almost infinitely upgradeable and can deliver some astonishing speeds. In Hong Kong, where multiple fibre networks vie for customers, you can already get 100Mbit/s symmetrical (that’s upstream as well as down) and customers with this kind of service are asking for 1000Mbit/s (also known as gigabit speeds).

Sadly, the UFB entry level price only gets you 30Mbit/s download and 10Mbit/s upload, but that’s a lot better than you’ve probably got today for a similar price point. There’s also the hope that once customers see what they can do with 30/10 they’ll move up to 100/50 and beyond as quickly as they can.

Regional communities stand to benefit hugely from the digital revolution, but have always struggled for connectivity. With the UFB nearly 75 percent of New Zealanders will be able to get ultra-fast speeds by the end of the decade. That still leaves 25 percent for whom speeds beyond 5Mbit/s are just science fiction. That’s the next battle ground – making sure we don’t build a twotier internet with rural New Zealanders being left in the dust. Today we have the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) but that only gets us so far. It’s time to start thinking about what will bring rural New Zealand up to speed so we can unleash pent-up demand for ultra-fast broadband.

ABOUT PAUL BRISLEN//

Paul Brislen is the Telecommunication Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) chief executive.

There are two pieces of legislation that currently concern me. The first is the Government Communications and Security Bureau Bill, which is designed to tidy up some pesky confusion about just what the GCSB is allowed to do.

According to the government, the current Act is outdated and open to misinterpretation. Apparently, the New Zealand government has been allowing the NZ SIS and police to use the GCSB personnel and capability to fill in gaps in their own capabilities. That is, the SIS or police get a warrant to spy on a New Zealand citizen or resident and the GCSB does the leg work.

The only problem with this (well, not the only problem, but the one we’ll focus on) is the current GCSB Act prohibits the GCSB from doing this. But the Government says it’s not clear and the new legislation will tidy it up for all to see.

The current Act says:

Neither the Director, nor an employee of the Bureau, nor a person acting on behalf of the Bureau may authorise or take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a person (not being a foreign organisation or a foreign person) who is a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident.

Frankly, to my mind, this seems quite clear-cut and unambiguous. The GCSB cannot spy on New Zealand citizens or permanent residents at all. Ever. Under any circumstances.

The Prime Minister says the new GCSB Bill won’t extend the powers of the GCSB but will allow the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders or permanent residents. Sounds like an extension to me.

On top of that, the government has introduced a new Telecommunications Interception (Capability and Security) Bill which will “tidy up” the existing Telecommunications Interception Act which is also, apparently, somewhat loosely worded.

The current Act requires telcos to work with agencies that have warrants and to ensure that communications are able to be intercepted.

The new TICS Bill goes beyond that. Not only will telcos be required to make sure their networks can be intercepted, but over-the-top providers (such as Google, Microsoft and Apple) may also be required to do likewise. In addition, if these providers come up with a product that can’t be intercepted, the GCSB may require that product not be sold in New Zealand.

So, if Apple comes up with a messaging solution, let’s call it iMessage because that’s its name, which is encrypted and which allows secure communication that can’t be intercepted, then either Apple has to hack its own systems on behalf of the New Zealand spy agency or not sell the product in New Zealand. Which is likely to happen do you think, given that the equivalent US law explicitly tells US telco service providers that they’re not allowed to do this kind of thing for any other country? They can spy for America, but not for New Zealand.

And let’s imagine that a New Zealand company comes up with a new cloud-based service that revolutionises business communications. Given the extreme nature of the New Zealand legislation, would any non-New Zealander ever trust that company’s assurances regarding security and privacy? Probably not.

The TICS bill doesn’t stop there. It goes one step further and introduces a whole new section which gives the GCSB the power to oversee certain elements of the telcos’ networks. Companies like Chorus, Vodafone and Telecom won’t be allowed to make changes to certain key elements without getting permission from the GCSB. Presumably that will include not only the hardware and software that will be deployed (or removed) but also which provider the telcos are allowed to use. Given that the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) prepared by ministry officials includes lots of redacted paragraphs, it’s a little hard to tell just what advice was given, but there are numerous references to Huawei and ZTE, two well-known Chinese equipment providers.

The upshot is that the government is increasing the GCSB’s capability but outsourcing the cost of that increase to the telcos themselves. Huawei has made a name for itself by offering good quality equipment at a significant cost saving for the telcos – if they can’t use Huawei in future because of some perceived security issue then the telcos costs will increase, even before we get into the realm of having to store (and make accessible) customer data.

This is the crux of the issue. We have a security apparatus that is built around an alliance with our traditional comrades in arms – the US, UK, Australia and Canada. But at the same time we have a trade model built around the new world order of South East Asia and China in particular. The two worlds don’t exist well together and unfortunately we’re eventually going to have to choose one over the other. In the meantime, New Zealanders will be spied on by an agency with a new remit that includes not only security issues but also economic factors, and we will end up paying more for the privilege.

These are indeed strange times we live in.

There are two pieces of legislation that currently concern me. The first is the Government Communications and Security Bureau Bill, which is designed to tidy up some pesky confusion about just what the GCSB is allowed to do.

According to the government, the current Act is outdated and open to misinterpretation. Apparently, the New Zealand government has been allowing the NZ SIS and police to use the GCSB personnel and capability to fill in gaps in their own capabilities. That is, the SIS or police get a warrant to spy on a New Zealand citizen or resident and the GCSB does the leg work.

The only problem with this (well, not the only problem, but the one we’ll focus on) is the current GCSB Act prohibits the GCSB from doing this. But the Government says it’s not clear and the new legislation will tidy it up for all to see.

The current Act says:

Neither the Director, nor an employee of the Bureau, nor a person acting on behalf of the Bureau may authorise or take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a person (not being a foreign organisation or a foreign person) who is a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident.

Frankly, to my mind, this seems quite clear-cut and unambiguous. The GCSB cannot spy on New Zealand citizens or permanent residents at all. Ever. Under any circumstances.

The Prime Minister says the new GCSB Bill won’t extend the powers of the GCSB but will allow the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders or permanent residents. Sounds like an extension to me.

On top of that, the government has introduced a new Telecommunications Interception (Capability and Security) Bill which will “tidy up” the existing Telecommunications Interception Act which is also, apparently, somewhat loosely worded.

The current Act requires telcos to work with agencies that have warrants and to ensure that communications are able to be intercepted.

The new TICS Bill goes beyond that. Not only will telcos be required to make sure their networks can be intercepted, but over-the-top providers (such as Google, Microsoft and Apple) may also be required to do likewise. In addition, if these providers come up with a product that can’t be intercepted, the GCSB may require that product not be sold in New Zealand.

So, if Apple comes up with a messaging solution, let’s call it iMessage because that’s its name, which is encrypted and which allows secure communication that can’t be intercepted, then either Apple has to hack its own systems on behalf of the New Zealand spy agency or not sell the product in New Zealand. Which is likely to happen do you think, given that the equivalent US law explicitly tells US telco service providers that they’re not allowed to do this kind of thing for any other country? They can spy for America, but not for New Zealand.

And let’s imagine that a New Zealand company comes up with a new cloud-based service that revolutionises business communications. Given the extreme nature of the New Zealand legislation, would any non-New Zealander ever trust that company’s assurances regarding security and privacy? Probably not.

The TICS bill doesn’t stop there. It goes one step further and introduces a whole new section which gives the GCSB the power to oversee certain elements of the telcos’ networks. Companies like Chorus, Vodafone and Telecom won’t be allowed to make changes to certain key elements without getting permission from the GCSB. Presumably that will include not only the hardware and software that will be deployed (or removed) but also which provider the telcos are allowed to use. Given that the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) prepared by ministry officials includes lots of redacted paragraphs, it’s a little hard to tell just what advice was given, but there are numerous references to Huawei and ZTE, two well-known Chinese equipment providers.

The upshot is that the government is increasing the GCSB’s capability but outsourcing the cost of that increase to the telcos themselves. Huawei has made a name for itself by offering good quality equipment at a significant cost saving for the telcos – if they can’t use Huawei in future because of some perceived security issue then the telcos costs will increase, even before we get into the realm of having to store (and make accessible) customer data.

This is the crux of the issue. We have a security apparatus that is built around an alliance with our traditional comrades in arms – the US, UK, Australia and Canada. But at the same time we have a trade model built around the new world order of South East Asia and China in particular. The two worlds don’t exist well together and unfortunately we’re eventually going to have to choose one over the other. In the meantime, New Zealanders will be spied on by an agency with a new remit that includes not only security issues but also economic factors, and we will end up paying more for the privilege.

These are indeed strange times we live in.

ABOUT PAUL BRISLEN//

Paul Brislen is the Telecommunication Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) chief executive.

www.tuanz.org.nz 
tuanz.org.nz/blog/

When I started at TUANZ nearly three years ago we immediately jumped in to the debate around the government’s new Telecommunications Bill and its ten-year regulatory holiday for whoever built the fibre network.

We pushed hard for the Commerce Commission to have oversight of the industry. TUANZ and various other organisations had worked too hard to get a regulatory regime in the first place to let it get thrown away as a bargaining chip.

The reason we fought so hard is because the previous decade had seen government after government gamed by the incumbent to the point where investment was at an all-time low, competition was non-existent and customers were paying some of the highest prices for the poorest services in the world.

Direct government ownership of the industry had been replaced by complete lack of involvement, to the detriment of both competitors and customers alike.

Finally, in 2001, we saw an inquiry, a review and the introduction of an extremely light-handed regulatory regime that didn’t really work, but was a start. In 2006 the regime was beefed up and finally given the teeth it needed to ensure competition was robust but fair and that consumers were the beneficiaries of the telco sector rather than the victims.

All that has now been swept aside. The Government has introduced three options for the regulation of the fixed-line copper network for the rest of the decade and all of them involve the Beehive setting the price for wholesale service.

In many ways this harkens back to the 1970s when MPs would debate the price of butter in the House, only this time there will be no debate. The price will be set by the executive and that’s that.

Chorus will be very happy about this. It ensures that the pesky Commerce Commission with its pesky ‘cost-based’ pricing model doesn’t get a look in. Instead of reducing the cost of copper broadband to ISPs, the price will remain roughly the same or drop by a couple of dollars.

Telecom will be happy because the Government allows Telecom’s homeline service to continue as is, unmolested by change. That means other ISPs, that don’t own the PSTN (ie everyone else) will end up paying more for the same service. Telecom won’t have to unbundle because unbundling is deemed an inefficient use of resources but still gets to sit pretty while its competitors’ costs increase.

The smaller ISPs – CallPlus, Orcon and the like – who have unbundled will end up seeing their investment derailed completely. The Government’s three solutions are a nightmare for these guys as the Government will potentially put up the price of an unbundled line.

Customers see no change to their pricing whatsoever. No ISP will pass on a saving of a couple of dollars and that’s the best you could hope for out of this.

The Government is the major investor in the UFB and has now usurped the role of regulator as well. Instead of having an arm’s length, independent Commerce Commission, we will have prices set by the minister or, at best a Commission that can only act in a manner that can only be described highly prescriptive.

Instead of an international benchmark, the Commission would only be allowed to set copper pricing by directly comparing with the UFB pricing model, putting aside any consideration of the different service speeds, capabilities, network age and all the rest. The price would be limited to a range set around the cost of the entry level fibre price and that’s that.

I wonder what Vector’s view of this sudden renegotiation of the terms will be. I wonder what international investors I wonder what our trading partners think of a regime that allows politicians to replace regulators at a time when the government is also the investor.

think of a government that is willing to usurp the regulator in such a stellar fashion. I wonder what customers think the outcome will be if we allow the needs of one company to override the needs of both the industry and the users

This year will see a lot of navel-gazing from our two largest telcos. Vodafone has swallowed TelstraClear and now it has to digest what is going to be quite a meal.

The good news is the two companies don’t overlap in many places so there shouldn’t be too much bloodletting outside the back office areas, but even if it goes smoothly and without hiccup, it’s still a mammoth undertaking. I’d expect Vodafone to be somewhat distracted for at least 12 months but once it’s sorted, I’m looking for aggressive moves in terms of fixed line services, wholesale backhaul services to other telcos and generally a major move into the landline market.

Telecom, meanwhile, has a new CEO, an extremely large staff, a new regulatory environment and a desire to take Vodafone on in the mobile space. Assuming Telecom can slim down to a trim fighting force in a hurry, we should see Telecom deal to Vodafone in mobile in the same way Vodafone hopes to deal to Telecom in the fixed line space.

All up, this should be good for customers, but I do worry about what it means for smaller singlemarket players like 2Degrees. We will need to see how they cope with the new world order with one eye on making sure they’re not trampled in the rush.

The mobile space will see the introduction of ever faster network technology as we finally get speeds that will deliver the kinds of things we’ve been talking about since 3G was first introduced in the mid 2000s.

Long Term Evolution, LTE, is the fourth generation of GSM cellphone technology and with all three network operators in New Zealand now fighting on the same technology base, the race is on to offer high speed services to customers.

Three issues stand in the way of that dream – firstly, a lack of devices that will run on LTE.

Secondly, the cost of rollout of a new network and thirdly, spectrum.

Devices won’t be a problem for long. We’re still seeing DC-HSPA devices being launched that can hit speeds of up to 30Mbit/s download. Vodafone is the only one actively marketing this technology but both Telecom and 2Degrees are talking up their rollout plans.

LTE is a step up again – capable of up to 155Mbit/s download at the handset. That’s exciting enough as it means we finally have mobile speeds that take on and beat fixed line speeds.

Expect 2Degrees and Vodafone to aggressively market LTE as both have networks that enable quick, relatively cheap deployment. Telecom’s technology partner Alcatel Lucent can do LTE, but the cost of deployment is greater, which puts Telecom in a difficult spot.

And that just leaves the radio frequencies we need to run these networks. Currently the telcos are re-using existing spectrum but all are waiting on the government’s sale of the 700MHz spectrum range, due to take place once the analogue TV signal is switched off.

We’ll see an announcement about the sale process in the next few months.

The landline market should start to heat up but only if you’re in the right place at the right time. The fibre to the home project (Ultrafast Broadband) is now well underway and we should start to see services coming on stream from all the major ISPs in 2013, but don’t expect it at a house near you any time soon. Schools, hospitals and businesses are the priority targets for the UFB rollout with the residential build really kicking off in 2015. Still, if you live on a fibre deployment route, you might be in a position to take advantage of the work being done, so check with your ISP.

By the end of 2013 we should have faster mobile broadband, cheaper prices in both mobile and fixed, more customers connecting via fibre to the home and hopefully a more competitive environment all round, except for one area: international capacity.

Unfortunately 2013 won’t see any change to the monopoly position and New Zealand will continue to rely on one company for almost all its international needs. Time will tell if that’s acceptable to us or not.

ABOUT PAUL BRISLEN//

Paul Brislen is the Telecommunication Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) chief executive.

www.tuanz.org.nz

tuanz.org.nz/blog/