Clear and Telecom executives ring off

Two senior telecommunications executives departed the increasingly competitive fray yesterday.

Tim Cullinane resigned as chief executive of Clear Communications after two years in the post.

Telecom's chief financial officer, Jeff White, also announced what the market had suspected since he was beaten by Theresa Gattung for the top job at Telecom. He will leave at the end of March.

Mr Cullinane will leave in June and be replaced by an appointee of British Telecom, which became Clear's full owner last June after buying the shares of the Todd family and TVNZ.

"My task was to oversee the integration of Clear into BT and I stayed on for a year to do that," Mr Cullinane said yesterday. "A local board and managing director is no longer required."

He said his successor, who could be announced within the next few weeks, would likely be an operations person from within BT.

Clear had put in place the "building blocks for significant success in the business market" and so was equipped to meet the challenge of the Telstra-Saturn joint venture announced last week.

Mr Cullinane declined to comment on Clear's earlier merger negotiations with Telstra, saying they were a subject for BT, as shareholder, to answer.

Key industry issues such as Telecom's 0867 residential internet access protocol were unresolved, Mr Cullinane said, but he hoped progress would be made on the issues in the Government's telecommunications review.

The 0867 conflict with Telecom had an adverse impact on Clear. It had lost valuable wholesale customers among internet service providers such as Ihug. Clear had also shown no growth in the number of residential internet customers it had. But overall, Clear.net's subscriber base was "relatively flat" thanks to "reasonable growth" from business customers.

Mr Cullinane, who had an extensive background in the computer industry before being chief executive of Forestry Corporation 1990-96, will continue to consult to Clear after he leaves.