At 05:30 p.m. 27/12/2003 +1300, Steve Withers wrote:
On Sat, 2003-12-27 at 10:00, Richard Naylor wrote:
Personally I agree with him. NZ has had the *best* deregulated environment for the past 12 years and has largely squandered that advantage.
It was never going to work - which was obvious from the outset. :-)
So deregulation failed to deliver what was promised for it.
It failed because people failed to understand it. They still wait for someone else to do it for them and complain about what Telecom do or don't do. Why not do it yourself. There were absolutely no barriers to doing just that, just laziness and ignorance. TUANZ just bleated on about number portability and interconnect and failed to see what else was on offer. They've finally woken up to broadband - about 6 years too late.
Is that really news to anyone? The same thing has happened almost everywhere there was a dominant player effectively controlling the market.
I would disagree Steve. The dominant player is also bogged down with entrenched thinking and a huge investment in equipment thats past its use by date. Hence the earlier debate about architecture et al. So you just compete by being massively better. Its not hard when cheap gig switches are under $300
There was - in real terms - no opportunity to be squandered. The cost/price curves never met for competitors - because Telecom was gifted an infrastructure that cost far more to build than what they paid for it.
The competitors tried playing on the same playing field. At a time when technology is rampantly changing, the trick is to make your own playing field using the new stuff. rich