KEY POINTS:
I am shamefaced about the topic of this column; Telecom-bashing is so predictable it's almost too easy peasy to bother - like telling a joke where the punchline is Paul Henry or George Bush. (Although, come to think of it, those jokes still always raise a laugh.)
So I am trying not to bollock Telecom for its latest disaster, where some Xtra customers were without email for up to six days while the beast migrated its email server to Australia to provide whizzy new services the punters hadn't asked for.
I am grittily restraining myself from flogging Telecom for its ignorance in not realising that internet access is as vital as a phone line. I doubt it would think it was acceptable to cut off phone lines for 19 hours (even under the best possible scenario, that's what Xtra customers who use webmail were expected to put up with). And it would be easy pickings to slag off Telecom for the institutional arrogance which seems to be written into its corporate DNA; that poor bastard who is taking over as CEO is going to have his work cut out if he thinks he is going to change the high-handed culture that has become embedded in years of stonewalling competition.
It is certainly too boring to give Telecom a serve for its PR strategy, which seemed to involve denying everything until forced to admit you made a mistake and then deflecting any query by saying our first priority is to get everyone connected.
But the one thing about this latest Telecom debacle I simply can't ignore is where we become surely the only first-world nation to outsource our major ISP to another country.
Telecom's PR spin is that they have not given up control by shifting crucial parts of their Xtra service to Australia; it is part of a joint venture with Yahoo. Certainly the Auckland operation is a JV between Xtra and Yahoo. But the status of the Australian bit is harder to understand. It seems the server itself, in Australia, is Yahoo's. And I am not a techie's sock, but who's to know what priority New Zealand customers will get from its international JV partner - frequently billed as the world's second biggest internet player. Where will we be in the queue for service when things go pear shaped? Pardon my scepticism, but I doubt we're considered that spesh.
Telecom's PR head, Mark Watts (a former press secretary to Helen Clark), dismissed any security or sovereignty concerns about the server shift, saying Telecom was protected by a commercial contract, so it was miles away from conceding sovereignty.
Well, I'm sorry Mark, but it is a question worth asking, at least according to Communications Minister David Cunliffe. It is not clear whether he has been fully briefed by Telecom about the implications of the Australia migration. But in response to my questions, the minister's office said, through a spokesman, "Minister David Cunliffe has asked Telecom to provide further information on the matter including if there are any security implications resulting from the new service and will respond when the information has been received".
Of course, when it comes to phone lines, we used to have this quaint thingammy called the Kiwi Share to protect our local loop; but when it comes to broadband, even that counts for diddly squat. Our Australian-owned banks are subject to anti-hollowing-out rules which prevent them from moving all their back office operations to Australia. That's because banks are considered vital infrastructure. But the 700,000 customers of Xtra, the country's biggest ISP, might think security of their internet connections was pretty vital too.
