Down With Telecom.

The past few weeks have seen the death keel of mighty Telecoms monopoly in the New Zealand market. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for all New Zealand internet users, they have been attacked on a number of fronts. The most important of which is their monopoly on communications access into the kiwi home.

Woosh wireless (www.woosh.co.nz) (the consumer brand of the US communication company Walker Wireless) began to offer their internet and phone wireless deal in the last month. This deal threatens the one asset that Telecom has built and maintained it supremacy upon, the fixed wire network in around New Zealand. The reality is that it can never be commercially viable for another player in the NZ market to invest in a duplicate wire network of their own. Recent advances in wireless technology have meant that the copper wire is fast becoming obsolete.

Possibly more concerning to Telecom is the imminent government-driven objective which would force them to provide completely unrestricted access to the fixed wire network to all companies (paying at cost) to the fixed wire network. As I said before, this is the network this massive company made it fortune with. This threat has already forced Telecom to give much better access to other smaller companies, many of whom have been fighting hard for the last few years to get equal access for themselves and thus level the playing field.

Orcon (www.orcon.co.nz) and Ihug (www.ihug.co.nz) internet service providers have started to offer actual broadband (2Mb + connection speed) internet to the New Zealand public, which match, or better, the seemingly forced offerings from the NZ giant.

I think this represents a turning point for NZ communications. Finally the NZ public will begin to see real competition in a number of areas; all of which for years have been held back by the monopolistic greed of the stubborn behemoth that is our traditional provider.