Archive for the 'Broadband' Category

Spend the $900,000 Telecom – you cheap sods

Published May 6, 2009 Broadband , Internet Business , NZ Business , telecom 11 Comments
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Sigh.

And there I was praising Telecom the other day – praise it seems that was all too soon. I am concerned that recent behavior is indicating that Telecom is back to its old monopolist ways.

I write of course of the XT network interference with the Vodafone network. The facts laid out in Vodafone’s submission and the court case – ably reported by the NBR – are on the surface pretty simple:

  • Telecom’s new XT network interferes with the Vodafone network
  • Telecom has known about this for a while
  • Telecom could have removed this interference by spending $900,000 to install filters

There is a bit more nuance in the court case, but as a customer I am mad enough as it stands.

Yes Vodafone could spend some money to maintain their own service quality, yes Vodafone coverage is not close to perfect anyway, and yes Vodafone could have formally engaged with Telecom earlier.

But one the thing that has changed is Telecom’s new network.

The absolutely crazy thing is that the $900,000 to update all Telecom cells is chump-change in this context, and by not spending it Telecom is not only risking a lot, they making us all suffer:

  • Telecom suffers as they suffer PR damage, just as they launch a new network
  • Telecom suffers if their launch date is delayed
  • Telecom and Vodafone suffer financial costs of the court cases
  • Vodafone suffers as their network quality drops precipitously
  • We all suffer as we all have even more lousy phone services
  • The lawyers win – they always do

It’s positively juvenile, and the sort of behavior I would have expected from the old Telecom administration.

So please wake up Telecom – and behave in a way that shows you care about all New Zealanders. Demonstrate some of the values that you are trying to show in the video you produced.

  1. Fess up, say you will install the filters as quickly as possible
  2. Install those filters within a week. Nothing is impossible
  3. Settle with Vodafone so that their lawyers don’t run your business.

In the meantime those in the executive suites please ask yourselves How did this happen? Was this a decision made at the top or were you as blindsided as much as we were? If you were blindsided then how could your culture let that happen?

Until you fess up and move on we are back to the old promote one way and behave in an entirely differnt way – it doesn’t work for children and it certainly doesn’t work on us adults.

We’ll find out tomorrow at midday whether Vodafone is vindicated, but in the meantime I just want my phone to work properly.

Praise, yes praise, for Telecom

Published April 29, 2009 Broadband , media , telecom 3 Comments

This really is a stunning piece of work – even made this cynic think twice. Well done Telecom.

It’s important because it shows that Telecom increasingly gets it – they are getting that it is about delivering the right service to New Zealanders (fiber to the home rated a mention), they get that it is about the people that work there, and they get that Youtube (and twitter) are great mediums for spreading the news.They manage to say this while taking little digs at themselves and being very human.

It was uploaded yesterday Youtube time, and  had just 392 views when I saw it. It will be interesting to observe how far and fast the views go.

The cast list was telling – the boss is the eighth listed, which means he was the eighth person to appear in the piece. That’s leadership.

It’s so nice to be able to write something good about Telecom. Roll on the days when we can write a whole lot more.

Amazon is failing to be the iTunes of book world – so far

Published April 18, 2009 Broadband , Business , Internet Business , NZ Business 2 Comments
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I’m warming on the idea of the Kindle – Amazon’s ebook reader.

  • I like it for mass reduction, especially when travelling – it sharply reduces mass that you need to cart around on an airplane or  motorcycle.
  • I like it for convenience – You’ll get books that you purchase instantly, rather than waiting for days or weeks for them to be delivered.
  • and finally I like it for price – books are US$9.99, which is a lot cheaper than their paper equivalents, and a heck of a lot cheaper than buying in New Zealand.

It’s clearly the path to the future – a single device that removes the print and distribution industry from the Author-Reader flow. (There is still, and I believe always will be, a role for (book and news) publishers, to raise and represent quality of their branded products.)

So while the Kindle is not perfect, it is certainly a vital step to the end game. That’s an endgame where we stop using so many trees, we stop manufacturing so much paper and ink, and that’s good for our ecosystems.

But sadly I cannot buy a Kindle.

Amazon, apparently hamstrung by publishers, will only allow those with US issued credit cards and addresses to buy the Kindle, and only those with US issued credit cards can buy the books.

This is transparently protectionist – and stupid – as Amazon has always allowed me to purchase US published books in paper form with my NZ credit card and NZ address. There is no real difference – save that I don’t have to pay 25-100% of the price in shipping costs, and that I don’t have to wait 14 to 40 days to receive the books.

Amazon’s international sales could explode if they released the Kindle offshore – and the future of local rivals such as Fishpond and Whitcoulls would be doomed in the long term. To be blunt, Amazon has the ability to be the iTunes of the book publishing world, to move books sles from stores to online, to move book selling power from bookchains to Amazon. Hoewver by constraining sales to the USA they are blowing it, and risking being like Sony, who released beautiful yet DRM crippled music playing devices that left the market wide open for Apple iPod and iTunes.

At this stage I should be able to turn to Shipbuktu, a promising Kiwi startup that provided US addresses and also wanted to provide US credit cards to Kiwis. However their forwarding service is on hold, and has been since Christmas:

Meanwhile their US credit card service never emerged. That’s sad for all of us.

So Amazon just continues to piss me off. Their US-centric approach means that I can actually buy less and less from their store, while locals like Fishpond and MightyApe just get better and better. Still-  they have enormous critical mass and they have the Kindle – so if they can get their act together quickly enough then they will be hard to beat.

On the other hand Apple, while US-centric themselves, now have 80 countrybased iTunes stores, and must be learning quickly. What if their next product, as some rumopurs have noted, is a kindle-sized device with the iPhone software? Kindle reader is available for iPhone, and if Amazon opens up their service then it is game over.

Meanwhile I’m searching for someone in the business of providing US-based credit cards to foreigners (cash up front, clip the ticket on each transaction). I’m guessing there is nothing there – so does anyone want to have some fun?

Final Ferrit: The governance failure

Published January 26, 2009 Broadband , Internet Business , NZ Business , telecom 5 Comments

Part four of  a four part take on the end of Ferrit. We started with Market Space, then  site idea and execution, and business economics. This is hopefully the last Ferrit post, but the most important in this series

The Governance Failure

There were failures at a number of levels from Telecom, including poor strategy, poor execution, but to me most of all it was a failure of governance.

Strategy
The strategy failure was at the highest level – and not only in the way Ferrit addressed the perceived space (see above). The failure was at clearly articulating and following a vision of “What does Telecom do“. The answer is that Telecom NZ delivers telecommunication (& IT) services, and until they can demonstrate that they can do that well, anything else is a distraction.

The launch of Ferrit meant that Telecom moved focus and resources away from its core broadband and mobile business lines, and so NZ slipped even further behind the rest of the world. It is heartening to see in the press release that the main reason for Ferrit closing was to move back to the core business.

Branding
The branding of Ferrit was brilliant as a case study in ineffective branding. Beyond ineffective, Ferrit’s brand equity managed to plummet from day one. From the choice of rodent name, to the sleazy and intelligence insulting advertising, to the Ferrit.com website which was a porn site domain that Telecom was forced to purchase. Perhaps they could sell it back now.

Meanwhile New Zealanders are smart, and can see through branding campaigns that seek to portray an image that is clearly inconsistent with reality. Telecom itself suffered from this approach for years, and Ferrit was another example of just what not to do.

Simply put – Ferrit may have done everything they could to create a poor brand, but the failure to gain traction was caused by the poor site and flawed strategy, not by the poor brand.

It’s easier to describe how successful web (and other) companies go about building credibility, or brands. Trade Me, Google and Apple all followed a similar path. They start small, they make a great product and they grow slowly and organically through word of mouth. Only after they have established a strong beach-head do they contemplate an advertising campaign.

Torpedo7 is a Kiwi success story that has out-performed Ferrit by using this method. The bicycle and sporting goods site usability is fantastic, their fulfillment stunningly quick and their advertising spend is very hard to see. The result is traffic to their sites that is larger than Ferrit’s, and no doubt revenue figures that dwarf Telecom’s folly.

Ferrit turned this approach upside down, launching a wildly extravagant and misguided campaign months before the site was able to do anything useful. Anybody that visited the site had a poor experience and thus moved on, often never to return. By the time the site became mildly useful it was too late – the brand was in ruins.

Execution
Telecom took a corporate approach to the development and launch of Ferrit. They did the equivalent of buying and adapting SAP rather than just using Xero. That’s not how things work in the web-world.

They could have done it well – here’s how:

  • The leader of the team needs to be someone that completely “gets” the internet, someone that had no legacy power internally and someone that understands the technologies.
  • The number of staff needs to be tiny – obeying the two pizza rule, where two pizzas can feed the development team.
  • The software should be open source, or developed internally using the newer tools and never outsourced.
  • The marketing team should not exist until well after the soft launch and early market acceptance, (they just spend money) and external advertising agencies should never be contacted in the first few years.
  • The budget should be small – making the team work smarter with what they have and preventing any expensive follies.
  • The location should be away from the corporate parent (it was), and in a lean environment (it was not)
  • The team should be interconnected with the local web community, be that on the latest social networking tool, conferences such s Webstock or simply through blogs.
  • The early scope should be small, with more features (and dollars) added only after the concept is proven

Telecom and Ferrit failed on all of these levels. Sadly I’ve seen corporates fail consistently at building their own businesses – Pfizer’s recent laying off of research staff was an admission that they are just too big to innovate, while Trade Me is the classic example of a start-up taking away the corporate incumbents’ businesses.

Governance
This is where I am truly perplexed, and concerned not just for Telecom but also for many other large corporate businesses in New Zealand. The total failure of Ferrit was obvious to any external observer right from the start. How could the leadership of Telecom let this happen? And if this was really was a pet project of the then CEO, then how did the Board of Directors let this start and keep going for so long?

Was there anybody on the board that gets the internet? Was the board able to reconcile the tens of millions money being poured into Ferrit with their fiduciary obligations to shareholder to maximise value? Was the board able to reconcile their obligations to other stake-holders with not only Ferrit’s poor performance but the resulting internal distraction from the core goals?

Who was asking the hard questions? Telecom.co.nz has pages and pages of corporate governance material on their website, but I can’ help but observe the board failed dismally in their obligations to shareholders.

All is not lost – they did exercise their biggest power and bring in Paul Reynolds as CEO. He is slowly turning around Telecom, and is doing it well. We could argue that the Ferrit closure happened about a year to late, but really it is a small amount of money to the giant corporate.

Paul has managed to change out his management team and now drop Ferrit without acquiring a nickname such as “Neutron Jack” or “Chainsaw Al”. Credit to him for that, but I hope that his current board is asking him the tough questions.

It’s a sad interlude for Telecom that needs to pass into history. The great news is that this closure is yet another sign of a resurgent Telecom that puts customer needs first and understands that shareholders benefit when you create value for all.

Final Ferrit: The business economics

Published January 25, 2009 Broadband , Internet Business , NZ Business , telecom 1 Comment

Part three of  a four part take on the end of Ferrit. We started with Market Space, then  site idea and execution, and governance failure will finish things off.

The economics

The business result had to be razor thin commissions, if any. The site depended upon the larger stores providing volume of products, which they really had no incentive to do. There was also real internal cost to those businesses of providing the feeds to Ferrit, and the power of their brands were also being diluted. It just wasn’t a good deal for retailers, and the resulting revenue for Ferrit was never going to be significant.

I (wildly) estimate that the average commission paid by retailers was 2-4% – that’s a guess really, and it is a critical number that I would dearly like to hear from an insider.

The shonky revenue model was overlaid with a cost structure that was inexcusably large. We all saw how much money that Ferrit blew on often appalling advertising, but what didn’t really come out was that that spend was only a third of total spend. The development and operations/sales spends were also inordinately high, and also fraught with error.

Apparently a lot (or substantially all? – need sources) of the development and marketing was outsourced, which increases costs substantially and reduces control. Telecom would have paid top dollars for top firms, but clearly failed to manage them well, and gave them a technology burden that was just too much to handle. A lot of people made good money from the Ferrit debacle, but they are not necessarily proud of their involvement.

Meanwhile the end game team of 24 employees and another 13 contractors was huge – and I suspect that most of these were in sales/operations.

All of this was simply unsustainable on top of a revenue model that never had any industry credibility.

At the beginning of 2007 Ralph Brayham said that Telecom had spent $24m to date and was going to spend another $12m in the next financial year. It’s now two years later, and so, if nothing changed, I would estimate Ferrit’s total spend in the range of $40-60m. Others have estimated more – around $70m.

The overall economics of Ferrit was pretty appalling. Some numbers flying around twitter and here guesstimate that Ferrit was unlikely to have made more that $500,000 in gross profit throughout its existence, and was in fact more likely to have made substantially less than that.

If we estimate that Ferrit spent $70m then we see that the return on that investment was about 0.7% – a pathetic number. My own estimate of all-time revenues is between $200,000 to $400,000, or a return of 0.28% – 0.56% of a $70m investment. That’s a very rough estimate, and again I would be fascinated to see actual facts.

Final Ferrit: The site idea and execution

Published January 24, 2009 Broadband , Global Macro Trends , Internet Business , NZ Business 4 Comments
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Part two of  a four part take on the end of Ferrit. We started with Market Space, and business economics and governance failure are next.

The idea of the Ferrit site

So while there was a space, the proposed way to address that space was flawed. The  problem was that the proffered solution didn’t offer anything of value to anybody.  The medium to large companies that Telecom identified had not moved their commerce online were not looking for a giant website to aggregate demand. They needed to open their own ecommerce websites backed up by their own fulfilment processes.

The problem was that for an aggregator site like Ferrit to work properly the retailers had to get their own websites in order, and once they had them in order there was no need for Ferrit.

To provide a feed of products they needed to be able to pass on SKU’s, details, photos and prices, along (importantly) inventory numbers through to Ferrit. They also needed some way to accept the sale online and fulfil the order. Once companies had all of this on place then building their own site was a formality. They could even use one of the many off the shelf and open source (read free)  eCommerce website solutions out there. Wellington’s Silverstripe offers a complete website CMS including ecommerce, while OSCommerce is a dedicated open source solution. Both are free.

The business model was fundamentally flawed. It relied on taking a commission from retailers for directing traffic to their sites. A large commission. The flaw was that the retailers can simply set up their own sites and buyers can easily find them using Google. (Indeed Ferrit’s usability issues made it harder rather than easier to buy things from particular stores.)

Finally there was the Telecom question. Why would any supplier want Telecom to be their ecommerce route to the internet? What compounds that question is the presence of Gen-i within Telecom’s ranks, so a company already doing this sort of work for clients  was ignored within Telecom.

The Weaknesses of the implemented Ferrit site
The weaknesses were manifold, and summarised threefold: Poor technology, poor usability, poor business model. Overall it was a model of what not to do.

The technology was apparently based on an off the shelf product that was substantially changed by the outsourced programming team. The impact of this is threefold: It’s expensive to purchase a system in this way, the changes to the system probably mean that upgrading is difficult to impossible and the time and costs taken to make changes are prohibitive. The slow and expensive development of the site are external evidence of this occurring.

Sadly there were and are plenty of alternative ways to develop a site like Ferrit,  ranging from open source solutions to simply starting from scratch using modern building blocks and tools.

The poor usability of Ferrit was legendary in the New Zealand web industry. It was so bad that it turned visitors away, and though it slowly improved over time the end result was still basically unusable. To dissect just how poor the usability was is an exercise best left to the individual, and I would rather point to Trade Me, Google and Apple sites to see just what a great website can be.

Meanwhile the execution was so poor that the information provided by Ferrit (price, availability) was often incorrect, leading to a collapse of any consumer trust in the site.

How to do great web usability – iinet example

Published December 23, 2008 Broadband , Business , Internet Business , media Leave a Comment
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iinet have a fantastic new website for new customers. Try it –  go through the process to sign up for a service (use 6160 for Fremantle’s postcode).

The front page is simplicity itself.
iinet

Then it’s straight into questions that you can relate to:
iinet

The guy’s statements change with each screen – and they are actually helpful.

You can also go down a business route, and the questions are quite different. (do try it)

iinet

After 4 steps (which are actually fun, aside from the postcode/phone number bit) you get presented with three options. The consumer version came up with the option that I eventually selected for myself – that would have saved me a bit of time. Here is the business version
iinet

all in all a wonderful demonstration of how excellent usability can drive customer acquisition.

Or does it?

Sadly clicking on one of those business links led to this rather unseemly page.
iinet

Not only is the design ugly, the promised product didn’t show, and wehen I followed my nose I got asked for a phone number. I wanted naked ADSL, so no phone number should be required. Besides, I had already given my postcode earlier.
I figured out that I had to click the Naked DSL box on the far right (lucky I have a big screen), and I did so and faced another failure of a page. Sad.

I will guess that iiNet sees a mass exodus of potential customers from the process at this point. Some more work to do then, but a really promising start.

Would you let Telecom design your website?

Published March 25, 2008 Broadband , Internet Business , NZ Business , telecom 10 Comments

Telecom is launching something – I’m not really sure what it is, but apparently it will be some sort of Business Oriented Internet plan/ISP – where you get bundled internet access, hosting and things like Xero.

Business broadband plans will be “slightly differently priced” …

I read that as “more expensive”, but gee I’d pay anything for half decent NZ internet access – maybe even set up a business specifically to get it to my home.

and the services they encompass will also be different, she says. “There will be some guarantees about helpdesk and support.” 

Good. Indeed I do not know why more businesses don’t follow Trade Me’s example and set up 0900 (paid) customer service lines. When I want help, I want a really competent human to immediately answer the phone 24/7.

The business Internet service will register domain names for customers and offer to develop and host their websites. It will also provide managed e-mail services suitable for businesses and online backup.

Hang on -  why on earth would we want to get Telecom to provide those services?

Domain names, well maybe. But develop websites? Telecom outsourced their own unmitigated disaster of a website, so why would we not use any number of the excellent NZ design and development shops?

As for hosting, well let’s see what Xero themselves do…

Currently Xero is being hosted at Rackspace, in Houston Texas. (Follow that first link for all sorts of other fun stuff about Xero.com’s presence.)

Now – and this is really important for any Telecom employees involved in this effort – go to that Rackspace site. When you get there for the first time a popup appears – a real live person is actually offering to chat with you.

Close that down and browse the site – it is all about “fanatical support”. View the video testomonials, check out the offers and go ahead – order up a server and try them for real (or maybe just call some of their customers)

That’s the standard to aim for – fanatical customer service, 24/7. That’s what you’d need to offer for this service in order to make a difference, and sadly you’d need to do it at prices that are competitive with getting services straight from the USA.  (and that’s not a lot).

So – overall – it is good that Telecom is targeting small businesses, and I hope that they’ll stick to investing in providing reliable, speedy access to the internet and not get diverted into competing away from their core.

Why intervention is needed for Telecom and not for Auckland

Published March 6, 2008 Broadband , Business , Investing , Life , NZ Business , telecom 11 Comments

Falafulu Fisi asks an excellent question to the previous post on Auckland Airport:

“Aren’t both Auckland Airport & Telecom private companies? Why would you want to say that the government is an interventionist regarding the CPPIB attempt to buying shares in the Auckland Airport but not saying the same thing about Telecom?

I am a defender of property rights, and the state has no right at all to meddle in the affairs of private businesses such as Telecom or Auckland Airport. That decision to sell or not to sell is entirely up to the rightful owners (ie, the Airport Shareholders) and not those Commissars in Wellington .

That was a great question, but I feel I am being entirely consistent here.

I am a fan of Govnerment intervention when the market is so inefficient and the company is out of control that the other stakeholders (beyond shareholders) are under threat, and unable to do anything about it due to monopoly power.

I’ve been wandering around NZ this week and frankly the broadband situation is beyond a joke – it is shameful crime that has left us in the dark ages of the internet.

There is a very well run dot com that I visited yesterday that is unable to even hold phone calls over Skype to the UK or USA as their connection keeps dropping out. This means increased costs, but even more importantly, that they are not part of the global internet business community that lives, wheels and deals on Skype. (Try putting together a 6 way phone call using traditional services at a moment’s notice.)

Now their customer base is almost entirely overseas, but they should be able to operate from NZ. But despite Wellington’s other advantages they would be not without cause if they uprooted and headed for the first world.

Government intervention into Telecom is the only way that the primary stakeholders (customers and the economy) could get the service that the country needed. There were plenty of warnings, but the head was stuck firmly in the sands of short term profits.

There are plenty of other monopolies and duopolies in NZ that understand how to play the game when you own a market. You set your prices well below monopoly prices, you are great to your customers and you know if you step out of line then the ComCom and the Government will be all over you.

Auckland Airport has not exhibited poor behaviour – they are running a good business, and are even upgrading the domestic terminal. An equivilent case for intervention would be if they put prices up, ran the terminals into the ground (and so spoiled NZ’s image and tourism numbers) and milked the dying cow.

All that is proposed for Auckland Airport is a change of ownership, which has no material impact on the relationship between the corporation and it’s stakeholders. It’s not as if the new owners are going to roll the airport up, put it on the back of a ship of unusual size and transfer it to a field outside Toronto. This intervention is uncalled for from the customers that use the airport, and to compound it has a negative effect on FDI for NZ.

Where is Infratil while this is going on? They are conflicted – on the one hand they own Wellington Airport and would love a piece of Auckland, so they should keep quiet. However on the other hand they own Preston Prestwick (edit – thanks Tylersdad) Airport South of Glasgow in Scotland, and they should be deeply protesting our Government’s ham-sized fists which will make it much harder for them to buy other foreign airports in the future.

Set WiFi free

Published January 17, 2008 Broadband , Internet Business , New Zealand Institute , media 2 Comments

Over on Kiwiblog DPF guiltily confesses to using someone elses open Wireless connection for some internet time, and a trivial amount of data. There are several things wrong with this picture:

1: It isn’t normal to find open wireless connections in NZ. The reason for this, of course, is that we pay for MB usage, unlike in the USA where things are typically uncapped.

The implications of this are manifold, but the first is that if you open your laptop in any reasonable dense area in the USA the you are bound to find several open connections to borrow. The second is that if you surf in pretty much any US based cafe, then you are surfing for free, and the third is that the sheer volume of stuff you download for free means that Apple through iTunes can reasonably expect people to use GB’s of bandwidth to rent movies. Te reverse is true n NZ, and as a result the internet is not pervasive nor that useful.

2:  David felt guilty about using the open connection. To me, unless you crank up the P2P programs or hit pr0n sites, you should not feel guilty about using a free wifi port instead of getting raped by mobile data charges. But you should make sure that you are playing the game fairly by having an open connection at home.
3:  We are miles away from mesh networks – to me these are the logical future, where we wirelessly connect to each other to send local traffic and reduce our dependence on the telco lines to the house. We’ll still need huge pipes conneced to the global internet, but this will reduce last mile costs. Until we have critical mass of wifi ports open, and until we get rid of any ideas that you can charge money for wifi, then we are not on the path to maximising our bandwidth for least infrastructure cost.

Feeding the Apple swag addiction

Published January 17, 2008 Broadband , Investing , Life 2 Comments

The master speaks, and Lance reaches for his wallet to feed his insatiable addiction for all things Apple. At least it is a better addiction than Methadone/P/ice or other ilicit drugs. Probably just as expensive though.

MacBook air: ordered, but not with the tiny solid state drive which costs AU$1400 more. I’ll use this in some upcoming travel, but really I am struggling to justify this on logical grounds. It’s definitely, as Juha says, a second mac – not the primary computer that I’ll connect to a huge 30 inch screen. I will say that I have yet to use my DVD drive on this MacBook Pro for anything other than installing software, and that happens only every few months.

Apple TV: Awaiting to upgrade software when I am reunited with mine, so it will become useful – right now it is a gleaming cute white…elephant.

(Microsoft) Mac Office: Ordered, really for the speed. I’l still use Parallels for most of my spreadsheeting.

Time Capsule: While I had it on my shipping cart, I removed it at check out as I have no real use for it at the moment – I already have the WiFi extreme (highly recommended) and a 500GB backup drive.

Apple Stock: I doubled up on this a few days ago (along with eBay), so my purchases would have an impact on my portfolio.

Its amazing though, living here in Perth, how the internet is just so much more useful with high speed and almost limitless bandwidth. Bring on the iTunes with movie rentals – the ultimate way for me to feed my Apple addiction – and a nice earner for Apple as Jim mentions. However the Apple downloadable movies will be painful to useless in NZ, as Rod points out that we have a real infrastructure fight on our hands.

Indeed I am dreading returning to the inadequacies of broadband in NZ. I’m not kidding – it’s close to being so bad that I’ll find another country to live.

The advance of VOIP

Published December 14, 2007 Broadband , Internet Business , media , telecom Leave a Comment

Via the economist this chart and shows VOIP taking about 20% of all international call minutes for 2006.

Amazingly though regular international phone calls grew 10% between 2005 and 2006. I wonder how much was driven by falling prices, in turn driven by cheap and free VOIP.

economist

Sky UK and Google botch email migration

Published November 26, 2007 Broadband , Internet Business , media Leave a Comment

Looks like Telecom’s xtra debacle of a migration to Yahoo! mail is not alone. News Corp owns an ISP called Sky in the UK, and they are migrating customers to the Google Apps.

Well trying to. To start with there’s a 10 page pdf on how to change your POP settings over.

Slashdot has more .

Tokelau connects everybody

Published November 5, 2007 Broadband , Global Macro Trends , Internet Business , Life 1 Comment

Tokelau’s three atolls have no airport nor harbour and are two days sailing away from Samoa and just two years ago its 1100 Polynesians looked and sounded like they were in another time and space in the past.


Now they have free broadband

Tokelau is, of course, still part of NZ. It’s a great story.

Tokelau has no Internet cafes – in fact it has no cafes at all and its solitary bar, the Luna Liki Hotel on Nukunonu, serves warm beer – when it has any.

But a good Internet wireless service embraces the tiny islands that house the people. The three schools and three hospitals are all online and the service is being upgraded to a high-speed satellite service.

Blame the invisible man

Published October 30, 2007 Broadband , Life , Politics 3 Comments

Part of the blame for the underinvestment by Telecom, and under0-reaction by the NZ Government has to go on the National Party’s Maurice Williamson:

A rare written question from National Party communications spokesman Maurice Williamson to Communications Minister David Cunliffe in May… …asked Mr Cunliffe how New Zealand’s {broadband} ranking compared with its position in 2000

The written question was one of only a handful levelled at Mr Cunliffe by Mr Williamson since he took back National’s communications portfolio in August 2004. Since the last election he has made no media statements on IT or communications policy, maintaining a low profile that led Mr Cunliffe to dub him “the invisible man”.

This is not what we expect from the loyal opposition. Why the heck were National not all over this one – pounding the table in reaction to the pent up demand from a frustrated New Zealand?

Why?

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