TelstraClear optimistic on shared network plan

By PETER GRIFFIN, telcoms writer

CANNES - TelstraClear boss Rosemary Howard is still talking about a collaborative plan to bring 3G to New Zealand, despite a lack of endorsement from her potential business partners for building a shared network.

Howard said talks continued with two Australian companies on the prospect of jointly building one network to run competing services.

"There are a lot of balls in the air at the moment," she said.

But Howard was quoted in a Wellington newspaper a week ago as saying talks on collaborating with Telecom to build a 3G network had come to nothing.

And despite indications from her that Vodafone is showing interest in building a joint network, Vodafone spokeswoman Sarah Williams said the company was committed to building on its own.

"It means we'll have total control about when and where we build and what we offer our customers. We don't need to partner to make this happen," Williams said.

Howard was in France last week to catch up with the latest development in 3G at the 3GSM World Congress.

She shared the optimism of the main European operators at the congress on the market potential for 3G.

"Its time has come," she said. "Issues with handsets have been addressed."

Howard visited a number of European mobile operators who share infrastructure to offer competing services.

She also visited Italian telecoms operator Fastweb, which has become a European leader in IP networking.

"They've a lot of similar characteristics [to TelstraClear]," said Howard.

Fastweb had built an all-IP backbone and was a challenger going up against incumbent operators.

She denied speculation she was at Cannes to meet vendors for late stage negotiations with the vendors that will build TelstraClear' s 3G network.

But a scan of contract proposals appears to have been on the cards. Howard brought her lawyer, and is understood to have met local representatives of at least one vendor.

"I'm not here to negotiate," she told the Herald.

Howard had paid attention to the presence at Cannes of wireless broadband providers, including New Zealand's Woosh Wireless, but she remains sceptical of the technology's ability to deliver services reliably on a large scale.

"The Commerce Commission has said that fixed wireless is not viable for the next five years," she said.

"You've got to be able to do voice and the unit cost has to be reasonable."

Of most interest to Howard at Cannes was the emphasis on integration of fixed and mobile services.

"Enhanced 3G will have exactly the same performance as DSL."

Telecom' s head of network investment, Stephen Crombie, was also at Cannes to "keep abreast of what's going on in the GSM world."

* Peter Griffin attended the 3GSM World Congress as a guest of Ericsson.