On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 12:07 AM, Simon Lyall <simon@darkmere.gen.nz> wrote:

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008, Richard Naylor wrote:

So maybe a question for the politicians in the debate is - why after
14 years are people still debating whether we need fiber ? Why is it
all taking so long ?

"At work the internet is a great productivity tool, in the home it's largely an entertainment medium. [...] You'll be able to download Trade-me and You-tube faster � but where's the value in that? [...] To be fair though some value is created by people who work from home but for the vast majority of those people the existing copper networks do the job just fine. " - David Ware , Managing Director TeamTalk Ltd . April 2008. [1]

I'm sure stable owners said that about the car.

The article I sent though earlier is a counter-point to some of the points in the linked article. As is noted, competition is necessarily possible in the telecoms market. Thus the question is should there be a monopoly, but who will be the monopoly and how long will it take to archive. As a consumer - business or otherwise - in the market which is preferable?

Throw around emote words like government monopoly is not effective - many things in life are effective government monopolies. Roads, for example. Good markets can still be created on top of them. Telecom did not serve it's market well with it's monopoly over the past 20 years.

Nicholas