On 28 Dec 2003, at 14:32, Steve Withers wrote:
I still think getting affordable and reliable services offered over the legacy copper plant is an important step in creating a market for new and better broadband access (and based on performance so far, I don't see how or why cheap and reliable broadband services would appear over telecom copper without some low (iso) level of competition).
My view, too.....
...and how is that going to happen?
The regulatory "imposition" of more competition on Telecom through unbundling the local loop is as much of an imposition on that private company as any directly regulated pricing would be - just using a different method. For the "private property" folks, any regulatory change to the status quo will be a violation of Telecom's property rights.
... property rights that the government is presumably in the privileged position to amend as necessary.
The only ideologically 'safe' options (from a property perspective) are a broadly-based co-op or directly tax-payer funded (do it yourself, NZ) network.
True. However, rolling out new telephone poles and copper in order to deliver ADSL is absurd, even if the relevant city councils could make it affordable (or permissible) to do it in the first place. The ADSL stepping stone to a market of more-informed consumers who can see a reason to spend money on something like fibre-to-the-home only makes sense in the context of re-use of existing infrastructure. I am certainly not advocating that everybody should continue sitting on their hands and bleating about Telecom as an alternative to building new an innovative infrastructure; however, I also think it's a mistake to send the government the message "it doesn't matter anyway, we don't *want* competitive ADSL services". There's already a directly tax-payer funded, residential copper network in New Zealand; it just happens to have been recently owned and operated by Telecom NZ. Joe