KEY POINTS:
The Government expects its proposed three-way split of Telecom to mean cheaper, faster broadband, but is cagey about how it will respond if that does not happen.
This forum debate has now closed. Here is a selection of your views on the topic.:
Andrew Straw, Dunedin
I think the notion of being divided into three parts is far too good for Telecom. This company needs to be drawn and quartered for the quality of service it has offered in the past. I am looking forward to when the competition can put their own equipment in the exchanges. This should have happened years ago, when the rest of the world was unbundling. Why is it that NZ has to wait for everyone else to try something before they act? It is like going to lunch and making sure you are the "last" one in the longest line. It is dumb.
The government should spend its surplus to make grants to companies to expand fibre into every community and house in NZ. We should be competing with the Nordic countries, which are having debates about whether to have 100Mb or 1Gb fibre connections to every home. Instead, we fight just to remain 5 years behind everyone else. Let us set a fire under the politicians and get this moving! Next year is election year. Cunliffe should be taking action now if he wants our votes. We need leadership, not years of retrospective studies that will sit on a dusty shelf. And let me say one thing about Dunedin. It is completely unacceptable that the city did not get funding in the first round of ICT funding from the government. Cunliffe needs to pressure Dunedin to get off its bum and get moving with regards to ICT.
Lou Harrison-Smith
The original stupidity of Prebble and Douglas in selling a monopoly (although doubtless at the instructions of the world bank)is finally being redressed. The American buyers must have been drunk for a week celebrating their luck. Less than a decade later Ameritek walked away with six billion of our money. Raping the national economy like that gets you knighthoods though.
