Swain receives 60,000 phone messages

By PETER GRIFFIN

If he didn't already have enough on his plate with immigration and transport dilemmas, Communications Minister Paul Swain now has 60,000 public submissions on telecoms competition littering his Beehive office.

The heads of the country's second-ranked telco TelstraClear, and toll call and internet operators CallPlus, ihug and Slingshot, yesterday dumped the submissions in Swain's reception.

They were gathered over the last few weeks as part of the Call4change campaign which saw the telcos argue that people outside Wellington, Kapiti and Christchurch pay $84 a year too much in telephone line rental due to Telecom's market power ouside those regions.

TelstraClear chief executive Rosemary Howard said New Zealanders were "frustrated and looking to Government for leadership" on the issue of competition in the telecoms local access market.

"We're going to hear more from consumers. It's tapped a nerve in the voting public of New Zealand," she said.

The telcos can only wait to see if their political lobbying against Telecom's pricing will shake Swain into over-ruling the Commerce Commission and requesting local loop unbundling - opening Telecom's copper network to new entrants.

The commission shocked the industry before Christmas by ruling out full unbundling in favour of a narrow wholesaling deal that would stimulate competition in the broadband internet market.

Howard agreed with one Auckland respondent to the campaign that Telecom's "internet monopoly" was limiting users to "Third World internet connection speeds".

"If you look where we are in the OECD rankings, that's where we are," said Howard, pointing out that New Zealand was destined to join Mexico as the only OECD country not to open the incumbent telco's copper loop to competitors.

Swain said unbundling was the biggest issue in telecommunications for the Government in a decade.