KEY POINTS:
Telecom earnings briefings just aren't the same without the machine gun patter of Theresa Gattung, who is currently riding a donkey across Argentina, Don Quixote style.
Instead we have three blokes called Simon, Wayne and Marko trying hard but failing to make the fact that Telecom finished the financial year $3 billion in the black sound exciting.
Maybe Paul Reynolds will pep things up a bit when he arrives in September.
Maybe the mood is due to the fact that the result was largely down to the sale of the Yellow Pages Group and lower tax and depreciation and amortisation costs not stunning performance by Telecom itself.
The core business - Telecom's New Zealand fixed-line operation is in negative territory as the number of access lines falls (down 0.8 per cent to 1.403 million in the year to June) and calling revenue decreases (down 0.6 per cent to $962 million).
If the current level of competition wasn't enough to chip away at Telecom's revenues, it also has to deal with the structural separation and unbundling regime the Government is forcing upon it. Still, Chairman Wayne Boyd said Telecom would have an operational separation plan with the Government by the end of the year.
A few interesting nuggets came out of this morning's briefing:
- According to Telecom which has 1.98 million mobile customers, New Zealand now has over 100 per cent mobile phone penetration, which means there are now more active mobile phone connections than people.
Effectively, people own and operating two mobile phones - something I see a lot of as people attempt to keep their work and personal phones separate or subscribe to both mobile operators to take advantage of the best deals.
"Mobile revenue growth is now slowing and this reflects competitive intensity and market penetration in excess of 100 per cent.
"We expect low single digit revenue growth to be sustainable in the current environment," Telecom's acting chief executive, Simon Moutter said.
- In total, Telecom has 653,000 DSL broadband connections, up 40 per cent since June 2006.
- Telecom's internet portal YahooXtra will launch "closed portal" services by the end of the year. Little detail was given about these services, but Telecom said "customers can look forward to access to personalised home pages, upgraded email and enhanced security services and increased online storage."
- Telecom is mulling whether to up its stake in Australian mobile operator Hutchison for between A$250 million and A$350 million, something it may consider a more attractive option now that it is building a new mobile network based on the same technology that Hutchison uses.
Telecom said it will spend $150 million in the next year on building the first part of the network.
"That's a big shift for us really, intended to stay on the global technology path," said Moutter of the move to build a GSM network.
And that's it really. There was virtually no mention of the next generation network and the services it may deliver in the next year.
Other telcos around the world are obsessed with the subject, but then most of them were unbundled five years ago.
Moutter referred fleetingly to the "hiccups" in getting the Worldmode phone working properly for customers heading overseas and fended off questions about Telecom's decision to ditch the 14 year-old Connected Schools programme.
"We've met our objectives for it," said Moutter. "It's time for us to move on."
