On Sun, 28 Dec 2003, Joe Abley wrote:
On 28 Dec 2003, at 14:32, Steve Withers wrote:
*SNIP*
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.
I think it would be quite telling if the Government were to legislatively unbundle, and reimburse Telecom only for the money they had _provably_ spent upgrading and extending the network beyond the point at which they bought it. Telling in the sense that we'd find out just how little TCNZ have been spending on maintenance. I don't see it being a huge amount - Probably no more than a couple of billion. Everyone knows that huge tracts of the network which Telecom bought have been left untouched since their purchase, save replacement of cable junctions which have failed and even that with great reluctance.