KEY POINTS:
If 2007 was catch-up year in telecommunications, 2008 has to be get-ahead year.
Crucial, far-reaching decisions still lie before us in this fast-moving sector.
Spurred by the overwhelming cross-party support for the Telecommunications Amendment Act a year ago, there was enormous progress last year in opening the doors for competition.
The ground has been well prepared for local loop unbundling, naked DSL, bitstream services and voice calls over the internet on a large scale.
We've now almost finished replicating what the Europeans call the telecommunications ladder of investment.
This comprises a suite of regulatory measures that enable new service providers to enter the industry as resellers and progressively displace Telecom's technology with their own until they are able to compete head to head.
New Zealand started this process many years too late and has been paying the price, but progress this past year has been impressive.
Residential and business users are already seeing some benefits indirectly, and far more will become more evident this year.
But catching up is not enough.
As telecommunications increases its role as a dominant force in our lives, a small country like New Zealand has a vast amount to gain in productivity and lifestyle terms from taking the extra step to be an early adopter.
In the 21st century this means replacing copper wires with fibre optic cable.
The clamour for fibre was illustrated powerfully at the Digital Future Summit last November.
When 538 people leave their busy working lives for two days and pay a significant fee to attend a major government conference, you have to ask what's in it for them.
In this case the answer would lie more in altruism than self interest.
Most I spoke to were there as informed citizens who shared a passion for the role of communications technology in our economic future and a deep concern about New Zealand's drift backwards.
The talking point to which the summit returned, time and again, was fibre.
We now face a massive opportunity.
Fibre to the home - the replacement of the old pair of twisted copper wires with fibre optic cable all the way to the customer's premises - is motoring ahead in many developed countries.
It offers almost unlimited bandwidth for "triple play" - video, voice and data across phone lines.
Unlike copper, service quality does not degenerate when it gets a few kilometres from the exchange or street cabinet - rural New Zealand, please sit up and take notice!
In total, the cost of digging up the nation's footpaths and rose gardens to replace copper with fibre looks daunting.
But break it down into three components and it's absolutely achievable.
Fibre to the street cabinets is the job of the phone companies - they've already started.
From the street cabinet to the letter boxes should be a job for local authorities or power companies - provision of infrastructure services is work they excel at.
And the letter box to the living room should be the customer's contribution - once I have fibre running past my letter box I'll gladly pay to get it to the house to improve my quality of life and ability to work, and add value to my home.
Farms and other rural businesses have arguably more to gain from the economic benefits of connectivity than anyone.
The "network effect" applies and the full value will only emerge when the rural connectivity is universal.
But the benefits of connectivity to farms and rural businesses are vast and quantifiable.
The cost of fibre cable is a tiny fraction of the copper wires that currently carry phone and power services, the cable is visually acceptable and the poles already exist.
With the necessary consents, running fibre to a cluster of farms should be perfectly manageable.
The Government must play a part in all this.
Broadband is infrastructure - the "roads and railways of the 21st century". Investment in infrastructure is inter-generational and has an economy-wide payback.
Fibre networks must be "open access" - that is, they must be common roadways available to all, Telecom included, on equal terms.
A defining moment of the summit was to hear the very refreshing comment from new Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds that Telecom is committed to sharing infrastructure where it makes economic sense.
Bingo - that company has dramatically modernised its philosophy.
So some form of public-private partnership looks like the way forward.
Not to relieve Telecom from the responsibility of keeping its current network up to date, but to share between public and private sectors the cost of a whole new generation of technology.
Meanwhile, we must avoid stultification of investment while the Government clarifies its role.
While public investment in fibre remains a strong possibility, and until the Government declares its hand, the private sector will be wary about investing.
So the strong cross-parliamentary support for the Telecommunications Amendment Bill in December 2006 needs to be carried into our fibre future. Let's not allow this to go on the back burner or become an election issue.
The industry, users and Government are, in my observation, more aligned on telecommunications than any time in the past decade.
This is a moment in time to take decisive action.
* Ernie Newman is the chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association of NZ (TUANZ).
