KEY POINTS:
Early in his career Steve Lowe was a Post Office engineer in the pre-Telecom era. After time overseas working in senior technology roles - most recently as Asia Pacific vice- president for AT&T - he returned to New Zealand this year to head up the local business of Alcatel Lucent, the company building Telecom's new cellular network and working on its next-generation fixed-line network. Lowe spoke to Simon Hendery about what brought him back to New Zealand and his strategy for driving Alcatel Lucent in an environment where IT and communications infrastructure has become a hot political issue.
What prompted your move back to New Zealand?
The original plan for me and my family in 1999 was to go away for a couple of years. So by 2007 it had become eight years and we had decided that had been long enough to be away. [The decision to take up the Alcatel Lucent CEO role here] was a mixture of family reasons and the opportunity to be involved in what was going on in the ICT sector in New Zealand. That was becoming attractive with the ramping up of the fibre broadband debate. I was approached by Alcatel Lucent early this year about this appointment, so those things came together quite nicely and next thing I'm back.
What has been your impression of the state of the industry here?
I haven't really been surprised by anything I've seen back in New Zealand. The ICT industry continues to move forward quite significantly.
We're all encouraged by this year's debate around pushing high-speed broadband. One thing I would throw in around those discussions, which I think applies to all countries and is no different here, is that high-speed broadband access is only one part of the broadband internet user experience. It also depends on the national backhaul, the international connectivity and the physical location of the content and the size of the servers the content is on around the world. That all plays into the end-user experience.
There's a lot of discussion and focus around access [to fast broadband] but I don't see as much discussion addressing the end-to-end user experience or the other parts around connectivity or location of content. All of those things need to be addressed.
Alcatel Lucent's business has grown significantly this year, with 200 extra staff taking the headcount to over 800. Is it hard to fill vacancies?
It's always a challenge. We're competing with a number of other ICT companies in New Zealand that are also looking for skilled staff. We're not having what I'd call major problems. The majority of our hiring is from here in New Zealand. A minority is from offshore. Some of that is bringing in experienced people [from Alcatel Lucent's global business] to work on major projects.
With recent debate around the viability of a national fibre-optic broadband network, concepts like "fibre to the home" have been kicked around. Alcatel Lucent has been talking about a slightly different strategy: "fibre to the most economic point". What does that mean? The relevance of it here is that there is a lot of talk about fibre to the premises or fibre to the home, overlaid by political discussions this year around partial government funding [of a national fibre network]. Our view is that until we see more development around the political discussion and how some subsidised funding or some public-private partnerships might develop, the commercial reality today is fibre to the most economic point.
