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[David McNeill]

Well if your in Auckland and in a rural area or there are schools near you
that don't currently have broadband then your area is probably under Probe
and they are supposed to reach you by the end of the year.

But _elecom didn't win Probe in Auckland.

Wired Country won it, hurray for competition.

Te Hihi school get Wired Country and enjoy it, because they're on a ridge
with good line of sight.

I hear the actual probe negotiations - how much is actually paid for - are
tortuious.

And _elecom are thumbing their nose at our Government by using their probe
money to subsidise the monthly Xtra fees of the ridiculously expensive BCL
service, effectively shutting other ISP's out of BCL, rather than using it
on capital expenditure and installing more dslams, mini dslams, newer
flavours of xdsl and dsl extenders.

Paul Swain should stick _elecom with a hot poker. They don't vote for him,
we do.

Harumph.

DaveMc

[LEE Tet Yoon]

Post by David McNeill

Well if your in Auckland and in a rural area or there are schools near you
that don't currently have broadband then your area is probably under Probe
and they are supposed to reach you by the end of the year.

But _elecom didn't win Probe in Auckland.
Wired Country won it, hurray for competition.
Te Hihi school get Wired Country and enjoy it, because they're on a ridge
with good line of sight.

Yes that was my point. You mentioned WC had expanded but didn't quite reach you. If you are near a school or otherwise in an area covered by probe, you should be covered by the end of the year, in theory.

Post by David McNeill
I hear the actual probe negotiations - how much is actually paid for - are
tortuious.

Don't know about this. Having said that last time I heard the deal between the gov and WC had not yet been reached. Hoping it will be soon. In any case, it is my understanding probe for Auckland probably won't be that much money since it's considered already well covered.

Post by David McNeill
And _elecom are thumbing their nose at our Government by using their probe
money to subsidise the monthly Xtra fees of the ridiculously expensive BCL
service, effectively shutting other ISP's out of BCL, rather than using it
on capital expenditure and installing more dslams, mini dslams, newer
flavours of xdsl and dsl extenders.

Well most of the probe deals were jointly run by Telecom and BCL I believe so you could argue this is what the government wanted. Don't forget too that gov has strong interest in BCL. Remember too that probe is primarily intended to get broadband to all schools and rural areas. Even if some of these may be good for NZ, they might not necessarily fall under the criterion for probe.

Post by David McNeill
Paul Swain should stick _elecom with a hot poker. They don't vote for him,
we do.

Teresa might. She is supposedly a good friend of Helen Clark after all... So might other Telecom shareholders. To be honest tho, I think Telecom's dominance makes it difficult for the gov. As someone pointed out a few days ago, problems for Telecom could cause big probs in the sharemarket. And don't beat up on Swain too much. Remember he wanted to send the unbundling decision back to the CC but other cabinet ministers did not agree since they were afraid it would take too long. To some extent they were probably right, the CC does take a while to make decisions. The fact that elections were coming up probably did not help (I feel 3 years is too short a term) either. Law changes are probably necessary and this is supposedly being worked on. I also don't get why they couldn't accept the CC proposals in the interim but also send them back for reworking.

[LEE Tet Yoon]

Post by LEE Tet Yoon
Don't know about this. Having said that last time I heard the deal between the gov and WC had not yet been reached. Hoping it will be soon. In any case, it is my understanding probe for Auckland probably won't be that much money since it's considered already well covered.

Perhaps I should add, although it won't be that much money, for a company like WC, it probably isn't a bad deal. I seem to recall something in the range of $500k to $1 million. My mind might be playing up tho.

One thing, I was wrong about the contract. In fact all contracts have now been signed

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/scoop/stories/d7/f6/200410011554.124adc41.html

The Auckland one was signed quite a while ago actually:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/scoop/stories/d7/f6/200410011554.124adc41.html


And for those of you who are interested in something a bit funny (IMHO anyway) I found this page

http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/projects/probe/default.asp

"Broadband technologies allow for the transfer of large amounts of data at high speeds, eg. words, computer files, pictures, video and sound."

[Tom Parker]

Post by David McNeill
Paul Swain should stick _elecom with a hot poker. They don't vote for him,
we do.

I have heard it said that telecom is such a large protion of the stock market,
that they can on their own effect the currency and whatever else the govt is
interested in economy wise. So maybe Swain et al don't have to personally own
shares to have a conflict of interest.

I'm not enough of an economist to know if this is plausable.

--
Tom Parker - ***@carrott.org
- http://www.carrott.org