On Sun, 2003-12-28 at 22:23, Michael Hallager wrote:
Schools are not a business. Phone service to them should not be charged by the minute...and network access for educational purposes should be part of the national educational infrastructure - like classrooms and playgrounds and libraries.
ISPs should deal with them accordingly.
This is welfare state mentality stuff - which is why a lot of schools don't have decent connectivity. Like the teachers want a pay rise every year for their hard work, I expect to be paid for my service delivery as well. :-)
Without getting into an extended political discussion - in appropriate
for this list - I will simply say:
I do not see provision of an adequate educational infrastructure as
'welfare". It's an investment in the people of New Zealand that would
bring rich returns.
I also think that if the telecoms providers and ISPs of NZ can't build
and operate a network for schools / police / fire service / whatever
that meets their requirements, then the government itself should build
such a network.
I say this becasue today we spend billions on stuffing Telecom NZ's and
TelstraClear's pockets.....and the profit alone on that service would
build a kick-ass national network that would meet the infrastructural
aims and goals I have in mind.
We have seen so far in NZ that private network providers - mainly
Telecom, but they aren't alone - are likely more expensive in the medium
and long term - at the end of the day - than a publicly-funded,
cost-recovery network would be.
As Richard naylor has said: Why not just do it yourself?
Is that a question to individuals only? Or could the people of New
Zealand hear that quesiton and respond?
I agree that deregulation presented opportunity.....but where is the
competition we were supposed to see?
It isn't there....and Telecom NZ remains the most profitable telco in
the OECD - pound for inch....and mainly becasue they were gifted - by
Richard Prebble - a publicly funded and built infrastructure that no one
else today can afford to match.
I'll be quiet now.
--
Steve Withers