Ernie Newman's efforts have delivered many gains for consumers over the past dozen years.
Put Ernie Newman in a red suit and hat and he'd make an excellent Father Christmas. Perhaps that's a part-time job the former chief of Tuanz, the telecommunications users group, could consider if his new consulting career doesn't take off.
Newman yesterday left Tuanz after nearly 12 years of lobbying that has helped deliver Kiwi consumers sacks full of gifts in the form of better and cheaper phone services. His parting present is the promise of cheaper mobile calls, following the August decision by Cabinet minister Steven Joyce to set the fee that telcos can charge each other for calls between mobile networks.
"Steven Joyce's mobile termination decision was the moment I decided to resign," says Newman.
It would be wrong to suggest that things such as greater supplier choice, cheaper national and international toll calls, the better range and quality of broadband internet services and improving mobile calling options were all down to Newman. Nor does he claim all the credit for the changes ushered in during his Tuanz tenure.
"I have acted on behalf of the organisation, and I bask in the glory of that, but I've reported to a very strong board that has made very wise policy decisions which have been at the root of our success."
When he arrived at Tuanz fresh from a marketing job at Carter Holt Harvey, the board told him he was entering a very sick industry that was unique in the world in not having an industry-specific regulator.
"As the Commerce Commission itself had observed, in the absence of an industry regulator, Telecom had become the regulator of its competitors."
Telecom's dominance resulted in an "obvious superiority" in its approach to its competitors. Through endless court proceedings, it had reduced Clear Communications, the forerunner to TelstraClear, to a state of despondency, limiting it to competing in the national tolls market.
The effects of even that token amount of competition were stark, however, with Clear succeeding in leading toll prices "down through the floor", Newman says.
"The tragedy is that the Government of the day did not pick up on that and respond a whole lot earlier to the people who were saying that, in a network industry, you need to manage the policy environment so that competition emerges; it won't emerge by some sort of magic process."
Regulation came later, instigated by Labour's Paul Swain, with the 2002 Telecommunications Act, hardened up with an amended act in 2006 by his Labour successor David Cunliffe, and carried on in bipartisan fashion with Joyce's termination rates decision.
"I think telecommunications has had as ministers since 1999 three of the best politicians that the country could have put up there - Swain, Cunliffe and Joyce. I rate them all extremely highly for their intellect and tenacity."
Not so Maurice Williamson, National's Communications Minister before the 1999 election loss to Labour. "Maurice, sadly, allowed himself to be vastly misled prior to 1999 and I think would probably be the first person these days to admit it."
One of Newman's first tasks at Tuanz was to persuade Telecom to rejoin the organisation, after it had left in a fit of pique.
"Telecom had withdrawn a couple of years before after Roderick [Deane] allegedly was treated disrespectfully by the audience when he spoke at one of our events. In fact he instructed his staff that no one was even to talk to anyone from Tuanz."
Soon after Theresa Gattung took over from Deane as CEO, Telecom returned to the fold. That was the company's heyday when, free of regulation, its shares were worth $6, compared with $2 today.
"Perversely, if the regulatory settings had kept up with the rest of the world, Telecom would be a lot healthier now than it is," says Newman. "If it had had to face normal competition, it would have reinvested more in its network instead of paying out extraordinary dividends ...
"I would call it lack of vision - too much focus on short-term returns to shareholders and a failure to actually stand back and scan the international environment and foresee the way the industry was going."
While today's Telecom team is enlightened compared with the Gattung-Deane era, Newman is harsh about Vodafone, saying, "I've found it in recent times to have a very arrogant view of the world."
Newcomer 2degrees, aided by the termination rates move, carries his hopes. "It appears to be well funded, has done a good job of rolling out its network as far as it's gone, its marketing looks really sharp, it appears to be well in tune with user needs with its price plans and I hold real hope for it.
"I've been effective because I picked a cause that was impossible to lose. The need for change in this sector was so transparently obvious that it would have been impossible not to be reasonably successful."
Cheers, Santa.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist.
