KEY POINTS:
If you've travelled through south Marlborough country, the land that lies behind the Kaikoura ranges between Blenheim and Hanmer, you'll know about the amazing sights.
Not just the beautiful scenery of a rugged land carved out by epochs of glaciations. I'm talking about the power pylons that trudge defiantly through braided river valleys and over tussock hills.
Yes, they're a blot on the landscape spoiling nature's perfect picture. But they're also heroic sentinels to the march of progress. Built in the 50s and 60s they carry electricity to the Nelson and Buller regions and the high voltage cable that connects the North and South Islands. In the process of their construction, the pylons also opened up roads through the once isolated high country.
I raise the image because it represents what is sorely lacking in our telecommunications infrastructure. There is no march of progress and when it comes to broadband, the divide between town and country is a chasm.
The sorry state of telecommunications here, and a stark reminder that nothing is being done to fix it, was highlighted last month in a decision by the Commerce Commission to finally - 17 years after the privatisation of a public asset - set competitor access prices to Telecom's network. The good news is that for urban areas the access charge is $16.49 a month.
Doubters that Telecom has been ripping off consumers for years should think about $16.49 cost and then compare it with the $43.60 a month Telecom charges consumers for a basic phone line. If the rapacious profit margin doesn't make you splutter, add your smart phone features like "call minder" and "call waiting" plus your internet charges and you'll be up to $80-100 a month. I live in hope unbundling will actually work, that the competitors won't succumb to Telecom-like greed and this time next year we'll get all of the above for $50-60 a month. Hurrah.
But if you live in our rural heartland - where, according to the commission, there are some 335,464 phones (27.2 per cent of the the total) - there is no good news. Rural users will get nothing, or rather, more of the same lousy service they have now - on a network so outmoded it can't deliver broadband to most rural homes.
Which is why the commission's decision to set the access price of $32.20 for non-urban areas is absurd. The logic is that sparsely populated rural areas are expected to be more costly to serve than urban areas with a highly concentrated population. "Rural areas will require long cable runs and cables comprising a limited number of lines. As a result, economies of scale and density will not be achieved compared with urban areas."
Fair enough, except for one problem - Telecom's broadband doesn't work over distances greater than 4-5km, which renders it useless for most rural users.
Why would any competitor want to pay Telecom $32.30 for access to an exchange that delivers nothing?
The commission needs to get real about this problem. What it should have done is set the access price at $16.49 for all houses within 5km of any exchange, regardless of its town or country location. Access prices for the rest should have been set at zero - because as the commission rightly points out, they have to get their broadband via another route such as satellite or Wi-Max wireless technology.
What's even more galling is that Telecom is already getting a rural subsidy to the tune of $24 million a year - paid for by its competitors. That's the competitors' share of the Telecommunications Service Obligation (TSO) to provide a nationwide phone service. The subsidy is for 58,025 alleged "commercially non-viable customers" that Telecom claims it cost more to service than the revenue it gets from them.
It's one of the greatest cons perpetuated on the New Zealand public and the commission's access cost figures highlight the lie.
Sooner or later the Government has to get serious about delivering broadband for all New Zealanders. It has to rebuild a network of high speed, fat-pipe wireless technologies and fibre-optic cable. Hopefully it won't be a blot on the landscape, but to understand the enormity of the task ahead, the power pylons marching through south Marlborough country are the perfect inspiration.
