Ex-PM: portability probe 'objectionable'

WELLINGTON - Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer waded into the number portability issue yesterday with a legal opinion on behalf of Clear Communications accusing the Government of oppression.

The Commerce Commission is considering a deed signed by five telecommunications companies including Telecom, Telstra and Vodafone, which covers administration of numbering and a process to find a long-term solution to the problem of moving phone numbers between carriers.

Sir Geoffrey said the companies agreed to the deed after the Government threatened to regulate.

He said all companies agreed to the numbering administration part of the deed but some had substantial objections to the terms on resolving long-term portability.

Clear and Saturn have been public in their opposition to this aspect.

Sir Geoffrey said the deed raised serious issues of public law and constitutional propriety because, if the Government had wished to compel people, it should have passed a law.

Ministerial influence had been used to promote the deed, he said, adding that if companies did not agree to the long-term portability regime they were deprived of number allocation.

"Compulsion imposed other than by operation of law is a form of oppression and outside the proper function of democratic government," Sir Geoffrey said.

"My view is, for the reasons I have given, that the whole matrix under which the matter is being considered by the Commission is constitutionally objectionable," he said.

Last month the commission issued a draft decision that the benefits of the telephone numbering deed were likely to outweigh its disadvantages.

Sir Geoffrey's views were given in a submission to a three-day conference on the issue this week. A final decision by the commission is due by May 10.

Vodafone said in its submission that it was unlikely the Government would regulate telephone numbering in the foreseeable future.

Telecom argued that a regulated solution requiring new laws could take 18 months to two years and it was likely to be the same as the deed anyway. The deed was less costly and it would enhance competition.

Sir Geoffrey said there was almost no country in the world where it was easier to pass a law than in New Zealand.

Telecom said: "While Telecom is aware that Clear would prefer a regulated solution which implements number portability without question, it is Telecom's view that this would not happen." - NZPA