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 <swithers(a)mmp.org.nz>