Darren Greenwood
(Credit: Darren Greenwood)

As we know, farmers are such bleaters. They bleat as much as the four-legged woolly things in their paddocks. If it's not the weather, it's the strength of the dollar! Nothing is ever right. Likewise with rural broadband.

The Telecom Users Association of New Zealand has just staged its Rural Symposium on Broadband. Various representatives of the rural sector turned up, plus many from the ICT sector. ICT Minister Steven Joyce attended and received a right roasting.

Donald Aubrey, the vice president and telecommunications spokesperson for Federated Farmers, warned the New Zealand Government wasn't doing enough to help provide rural broadband. Aubrey told the minister bluntly, he could be the "architect of regression" if he wasn't careful.

The farming leader argued agriculture is the "true engine room" of the New Zealand economy, generating 64 per cent of the country's export receipts. Thus, the rural sector is demanding its broadband to be brought up to speed with the urban areas.

He added that the government's own broadband initiatives may not be needed so much in the city where it could "crowd out" the private sector, by making private sector schemes non-viable! Aubrey confirmed with me this afternoon that he was unconvinced that government grants to rural areas would bring the farmlands up to speed and more money was needed.

The event had seen much networking from telcos to electricity lines companies, and it was "moving situation" with the minister, so policies might change, he added.

I guess we have quite an issue here, something Australia also needs to consider for its own AU$43 billion NBN program. Now I have seen calls for it to be made "free", but any student of economics will tell you, "there is no such thing as a free lunch". Everything has to be paid somehow and there is never enough money to go round.

So governments like anyone else must prioritise, but are current priorities the right ones?

It might be argued that the cities and towns can fund their own broadband. The market can provide for the offices, the shops, the factories and the warehouses. As for suburbia, well that's where the voters lie, and they will want broadband for their shopping, the downloading of games and music, etc, etc. The market might provide here, but the voters seemingly want government, ie, the taxpayer, to pay. But is this "public good" a justifiable use of such spending?

And then we have the rural sector. Usually happy to shun government, but they want their subsidy too.

Put simply and bluntly: town vs. country, people vs. profit. But without the profits, how can we fund the people?

They argue they are the backbone of the economy, and will pay much in tax, an extra NZ$600 million this year, says the New Zealand dairy sector, thanks to higher prices for milk solids. Better broadband will also pay off as shown by the Livestock Improvement Corporation saying its online applications have boosted productivity by 15 per cent or NZ$1.1 billion a year.

So this issue of priorities is what governments and broadband providers face with their initiatives.

So what came out of the summit?

Richard Kay, IT Solutions manager for rural supplies business PGG Wrightson told me today that poor broadband creates challenges for his customers and sales reps across the country. Kay thought the response to the minister was "not as blunt as it could have been", saying more than a billion dollars might be needed to be spent on fibre, as well as wireless and analog frequency provision. But the country needs to avoid a "wild west" of too many differing suppliers and systems.

Nonetheless, "everybody is on the same page", the government has made "good steps but is not running fast enough".

Ernie Newman, CEO of TUANZ, who organised the symposium offers his reflections:

The government is right with its concepts and start, but there was a strong feeling the government must shift the balance to the rural areas where the economic returns are greater, rather than focus on population numbers, he told me. Already many companies produce innovative and cost broadband solutions in rural areas, which will benefit from extra support.

Newman added he was unsure if the minister might change his policy to reflect such economic demands. "The issue is these are the areas where New Zealand productivity comes from," he says.

So that, it seems, is the dilemma. Put simply and bluntly: town vs. country, people vs. profit. But without the profits, how can we fund the people?

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• Has New Zealand's smiling assassin delivered?
• XT network boosts struggling Telecom
• Telecom NZ loyalty offers to face High Court
• Kiwi TV spectrum could be wireless broadband

Darren Greenwood
(Credit: Darren Greenwood)

Do you ever get the urge to be naughty, especially if you are never found out? Do you ever fancy committing a crime and not have to worry about having your name splashed all over the papers?

Well, if you are part of an elite group, New Zealand is the place for you. You could be a celebrity that likes to indulge in drugs. You could be a senior politician involved in a million-dollar-plus fraud case. Or, as we saw last week, you could be a 30-something musician who likes to thrust the heads of teenage girls into your unmentionables!

I have covered courts in England, Scotland and New Zealand and I am amazed at the name suppression orders given out to protect the guilty here.

The courts argue that such well-known individuals would suffer extra punishment for being well known. Lawyers for the certain 30-something musician argued last week that if people knew it was he that misbehaved with a young girl in a Wellington street, they might not buy his records anymore.

Were they taking the P? Or, were they on the money with these comments? But as several bloggers discussed after the verdict, is such name suppression pointless in an online era? David Farrar at Kiwiblog asked his readers not to say who the musician was, but to post if they did know and which city they live in. His experiment showed many did know, and a few commentors posted the odd hint to educate the rest.

Indeed, with such details given in newspaper coverage, like the date of the offence and that it happened after the Auckland-based singer performed in Wellington, it was easy to work out who he was, especially when even the TV coverage with his features blurred showed he was such a shortie!

Thus, chat rooms, blogs, social media sites, etc, discussed the matter, with comments also appearing on the website of a certain 30-something musician from Auckland, though it seems they have been removed.

However, other 30-something musicians might feel smeared. Such suppression orders might cast doubt on the character of others with similar descriptions. Surely naming and shaming is part of the punishment, and as public figures, they might be expected to set an example and behave themselves.

Of course, there may well be cases for suppression orders to be made, say releasing details that might prejudice a case as we see here. Or even here.

But look what happens if you break them. This week, a website publisher was arrested for publishing details of police terror raids on his website. It seems Vince Siemer is well known to the courts already.

Well, what fortuitous timing for Internet New Zealand, the Law Commission and the Ministry of Justice to announce a seminar on suppression orders, contempt of court and the internet for 3 December.

With so many of us blogging, using Facebook, Twitter and the like, we have become publishers too, so this is something that might interest and affect us all!

InternetNZ spokesperson Jordan Carter says the legal issues caused by internet publishing are well known and significant. They include the undermining (deliberately or otherwise) of suppression orders, the lack of jurisdiction over internet material hosted outside New Zealand, and public discussion of crimes and trials potentially being a contempt of court.

He added later:

"The seminar should prove a useful input into the review of the law of contempt currently being undertaken by the Law Commission, consideration of the desirability of initiatives such as a central register of suppression orders, and also any wider review of contempt law that the government undertakes."

Now, back to our 30-something musician. Perhaps he should have outed himself and taken the rap. We still know who he is, but now we also see him as a short yellow-belly for hiding behind such legal niceties!

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• Microsoft playing nicely with open source
• 2009 funding drought rolls on
• Love me, tender
• Can not-so-smart meters help the NBN?

Darren Greenwood
(Credit: Darren Greenwood)

A year ago last weekend was the Fall of Helengrad. The Red Dragon was slayed and soon sent packing to New York where she now works for the United Nations.

A happy, smiling man, dubbed the "smiling assassin", is now in charge, loved by the masses, with poll ratings like those enjoyed by Chairman Rudd at his best.

But while John Key bestrides New Zealand like a colossus, as Helen Clark did in her day, how have Key and his government performed on delivering and managing communications and information technology?

While even his own ministers might wonder what he actually does, and people might say Key's biggest achievement was appearing on Letterman, a YouTube hit, our PM is certainly delivering on broadband.

His trusty sidekick Steven Joyce, a businessman from the radio industry, is heading the charge, with a NZ$1.5 billion initiative Key developed in opposition, a policy Key preferred to keep rather than the abandoned tax cuts that formed the centrepiece of his election campaign.

Now, the mainstream media has been positively reviewing the performance of Key and his ministers, including that of ICT Minister Steven Joyce, rating Joyce among the best, especially for a newcomer.

I gulp when I hear Andrew Bolt say Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy didn't prepare a business plan for your AU$43 billion NBN and that it lacks cost-benefit analysis.

There again, I've lived in Australia. I know you have cash to spare. It pays more to be China's quarry than it does to be its farm. And your dollar goes so much further than our Pacific Peso. We are just your poor Kiwi cousins.

However, it appears the New Zealand Government has done its reports and prepared its business case on our own broadband, unless, of course, our media forgot to ask. But the days of leaving it to the private sector are over, as Key and Joyce take a pragmatic "whatever works" line. Joyce admits there will be government involvement, with it ready to step in should private operators not jump on board.

While there might be the odd delay, such pragmatism is blunting any opposition. Indeed, every announcement on the broadband program seems to be widely welcomed, with just the odd complaints from telcos and the opposition Labour Party.

People might say Key's biggest achievement was appearing on Letterman, a YouTube hit, [but] our PM is certainly delivering on broadband.

But the telcos are keen to work with government, not many listen to New Zealand Labour nowadays, and technology is not an issue with a great political divide. It is something the country seems united on.

I recall the National-aligned David Farrar of Kiwiblog giving much praise to Labour and its IT Minister David Cunliffe on policy such as Labour's unbundling of Telecom New Zealand. Now, Joyce has announced his targets, how his roll-outs will work, along with the man who will head the Crown Fibre Investment company which will deliver the broadband package.

There will, of course, be more changes and developments along the way, such as the consideration of analog TV spectrum announced last week. I am sure there will be additions to the $300 million rural broadband policy to satisfy the wishes of farmers and that of TUANZ.

Like I say, we are China's farm and those cockies in the wopwops actually run multimillion-dollar businesses. The dairy company Fonterra is our biggest exporter and the price of milk solids is of major economic significance!

Just last month I was in the rural Central Hawkes Bay and one IT reseller was telling me how these agribusinesses need broadband to run their financials, plan their stocking, etc, etc, and how government must do more.

Of course, there are limitations to what government can do. There are fears government activity can undermine what the private sector can do, as outlined by TelstraClear opposing broadband plans by the Christchurch City Council. But New Zealand under Key and Joyce seem to date to be successfully negotiating this tightrope, branded "Labour-lite" by some and accused of having "a secret right-wing privatisation agenda" by others.

Elsewhere, on the tech scene, we have seen plans to abandon the Telecom Service Obligation, a $70 million levy to help Telecom NZ supply telephony services to rural areas, replacing it with a more open system to subsidise a greater number of suppliers to the rural sector.

We also saw, after a concerted campaign by bloggers and others, National dropping the controversial Section 92A Copyright Act, developed by Labour, though some new Bill is being considered.

But perhaps the most significant technological policy of the past year stems from Steven Joyce's other role as transport inister. From 1 November, he banned the use of handheld mobile phones in cars! Not only something to impact on how Kiwis do business but something sure to dent telco incomes as this blogger noted!

Joyce did it to public and industry acclaim, amazing considering an interventionist Labour government had abandoned similar policies as "Nanny State". Now, what was that about National being Labour-lite!!!

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• Why isn't NZ getting the Kindle?
• Land of the long white cloud computing
• Rethink Visionstream disaster, Telecom
• 2degrees comes out limply swinging

Air New Zealand's check-in systems went down yesterday morning, leaving thousands of passengers and airports in chaos for hours and the airline's CEO Rob Fyfe seething with anger over what he termed "being left high and dry" and "amateur results" in an internal email. Fyfe's anger at inconveniencing over 10,000 customers and losing millions in bookings will come to a head in meetings with IBM, which may end up losing Air New Zealand as a result.

Incredibly enough, what appears to have caused the issue was power failing to reach a mainframe, and the back-up generator not starting up in time. As excuses go, it probably won't fly with Air New Zealand. If a nuclear strike had annihilated the mainframe hosting site, or a huge earthquake caused the city to slide out into the sea, sure. But a power failure? That's what "mission-critical systems" are supposed to handle, right?

What's curious here is how little IBM is saying on what happened. Obviously, the whole thing is hugely embarrassing for a company that prides itself on being able to run big systems reliably but will it help if IBM clams up about it? Wouldn't it be better to be open here, and explain what actually happened? And, of course, to learn from the mistakes so that they're not repeated but that's a given, one hopes.

This isn't the first time IBM has been embroiled in controversy over a big IT system in New Zealand. In 2007 Computerworld reported that Project Sam, a combined billing and CRM system for Vodafone's Australia, New Zealand and Pacific operations had overrun its budget by hundreds of millions of dollars and was delivered late. The project started in late 2003 and again, IBM's response to the media reports about budget overruns, delays and customer dissatisfaction was ... silence. Instead, Vodafone had to front up with the answers and that can't have been enjoyable.

But wait, there's more: this year, the New Zealand Government Shared Network or GSN was deemed a failure, and canned. Reports released under the Official Information Act slam IBM's role in the GSN fiasco saying the IT giant's "performance has been characterised by non-delivery and high staff turnover of resources that did not appear to have the promised skills." IBM didn't have anything to say about the GSN fiasco either.

It looks like IBM has some work cut out to repair a dented reputation in the region, in other words.

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• Emergency IBM meeting for Air NZ
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Why would you do that, Amazon? New Zealanders also read books and it's a bigger market than Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Wallis and Futuna for instance, all locations that Amazon's happy to ship the Kindle to.

It can't be for technical reasons. If the Kindle works in Australia, it should work in New Zealand too. We have two WCDMA 3G networks to choose from and yes, public Wi-Fi too. In fact, Amazon itself says there's pretty decent wireless network coverage in New Zealand.

Amazon publicly states it has Kindle coverage in NZ
(Credit: Amazon)

Even if the wireless networking here sucked, and it doesn't, you could still load books on the Kindle via a USB connection to a PC hooked up to the internet.

I had a quick word with Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone about the Kindle, but neither seem to have any plans for the device. The Kindle isn't your typical carrier device that can be branded and liveried, I guess, but you'd think one of the networks at least would be keen to have it in retail stores ahead of the summer holidays.

So, Amazon: why isn't the Kindle coming to NZ?

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• Amazon's Kindle comes to Oz
• Decoding the American media nightmare

Being able to cheaply and quickly distribute applications, data and services to worldwide customers without having to spend big on staff and infrastructure is just one of the reasons for New Zealand companies to consider cloud computing; not having to go through the pain of outsourcing to countries with cheap labour is another.

But local companies may want to consider having their applications and data hosted in New Zealand itself, rather than in the bulk server farms of the US or even Europe.

New Zealand's public internet infrastructure is designed almost entirely for moderately-sized downloads from the United States. Any better broadband service than the generally available alternatives costs more than leasing a fleet of cars, and is hard to justify, especially for start-ups.

NZ small to medium-sized enterprises wanting to upload lots of data for use in the cloud will run into this bottleneck immediately, and so will customers using data-rich applications.

Downloads aren't much better either. Essentially, the poor performance of NZ's network makes for a poor cloud computing experience for everyone — the businesses wanting to provide a service as well as those wanting to use them. As NZ decided to allow its networks to be built the way they are, the corollary is that cloud computing infrastructure is thin on the ground here.

Most of the NZ cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) poster children like Xero and PlanHQ are hosted in the US because it costs much less and there's bandwidth to burn in America, unlike in NZ. (As an aside, this is true for the entire NZ hosting industry.) New Zealand academia has gone with Google for the cloud-based web-apps too.

Jethro Carr of SaaS-based open source billing system provider AmberDMS explains that his company hosts in New Zealand because it wants full control over security of customer data. Plus, NZ hosting means substantially lower latency for NZ customers, which is important for a good user experience.

Also, hosting overseas means being subject to laws and regulations of other countries and this could lead to privacy, commercial and confidentiality issues that wouldn't arise with an NZ-based cloud.

I've talked to people who say they don't care about these things, but despite that, would never host in China. The downside for Carr's company is much higher hosting costs in NZ, but AmberDMS believes it's worth it. Besides the above reasons, what if someone wants to simply start out in NZ?

Shouldn't the option be there so that we don't end up as a nation forced to export stuff that perhaps should stay in the country?

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• Google Wave developer preview: Screenshots
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• Aussie ICT should de-couple from the US

That is, some people got it on Friday, but it looks like a bunch of people had to wait a few more days, while couriers rushed around the country to deliver the discs.

I got a copy of Snow Leopard to upgrade the kids' 13-inch white MacBook, bought about six months ago. It's much-loved by the children, and I felt a bit bad about slapping on a new operating system upgrade without *cough* backing up and stuff, but it all went well.

The MacBook seems to run as well as before, with apps opening marginally but perceptibly quicker. With a mere 2GB on-board though, I have a feeling more RAM would've sped things up more than the Snow Leopard upgrade.

There didn't seem much point of booting into the 64-bit Snow Leopard kernel because the only thing that happens is that the video card appears to run hotter — goodness knows why. Guess more RAM is the answer here too.

With Apple bestowing Snow Leopard upon New Zealand, Cupertino's old frenemy Microsoft decided to launch Office 2008. The Mac Business Unit product manager flew over from Australia (she's a Kiwi, actually) and talked to a bunch of journos through the new features in Office 2008 and gave out review copies, which was most kind of her.

I'm not going to review Office 2008 for Mac here, apart from saying that it still appears to be very different from Office 2007 and the upcoming 2010 for Windows. The upgrade from Office 2004 to 2008 isn't exactly major, but I guess some people will shell out to upgrade their old productivity apps. Buying the full Business Edition costs NZ$699 with a NZ$599 introductory offer, and it may be a harder sell than the cheaper Home and Student Edition that costs NZ$269. You lose out on the business features like collaboration online with the Home and Student Edition, however.

I decided to install Office 2008 on the above mentioned MacBook to try it (and the kids want Word and Excel for some reason) so I slapped in the first DVD. The optical drive on the MacBook made some whirring and clunking noises for 20 seconds then spat out the disc. No error message appeared. I tried again, but got the same result so I put the disc into the DVD drive on my Windows box, thinking maybe I could copy over the files to a USB memory stick and install from there.

No go — Windows Explorer said the disc was 0 bytes in size.

Convinced that I had a corrupt disc, I asked Microsoft for another review copy and it was very kindly obliged. To my surprise, the new installation disc behaved exactly the same. Put it in, whirr, clunk and out it came.

This didn't seem right, so I tried a few other discs in the MacBook's drive, and it read them just fine. The drive read the second disc with Office 2008 extras without problems too. Obviously, there was something very special with the Office 2008 installer disc.

A bit of googling revealed that Microsoft is using a PowerPC binary as the Office 2008 installer. As you may or may not know, Apple's trying to kill off that old architecture; and on Snow Leopard, PPC support via the Rosetta translation shim is optional. If Snow Leopard detects that you are trying to run a PPC binary, it asks to download Rosetta so that you can do just that. Except that little feature didn't work with the Office 2008 DVD.

There was no obvious way to download Rosetta from apple.com so I got it from the Optional Installs package on the Snow Leopard disc. Ignoring the dire warning about having installed old crud and that I now need to get a package for X Server 10.5.8 (!) I popped in the Office 2008 DVD again and...

...the installer started up as it should.

I tried this out on a friend's old 17-inch Intel MacBook Pro before and after upgrading to Snow Leopard, which confirmed that this does indeed seem to be caused by Rosetta missing in OS X 10.6.

I'm not sure how Microsoft will solve this one, because it's not obvious what to do when your Mac just regurgitates the Office 2008 disc without an error message. It's clear that the best solution would be to include Rosetta with the disc since PPC installer is not installed on Intel Macs, but that requires a recall of current Office 2008 boxes. That's probably not an option at this stage, so Microsoft support will be busy if lots of copies of Office 2008 are sold.

Next up, I need to figure out why Word 2008 crashes immediately in Snow Leopard when you switch to the much-vaunted notebook view. It doesn't do that in Leopard, interestingly enough. Hints and tips welcomed.

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• What's the best business laptop for $2500?
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Now, however, it's time to test Reynold's mettle over the Visionstream debacle, where Telecom's lines techies — the people who actually keep the network going and who extend it — are being forced into the cold confines of dependent contracting as owner-operators, facing start-up costs of $20,000 or more while their incomes drop by a half to two-thirds. And, they're asked to go along with this amidst a massive global recession.

Slashing costs is one thing, but the way Telecom's done it via its infrastructure arm, Chorus, threatens to undo all of Reynolds' public image repair work. It's hard to imagine a more raw deal than the one offered to the techies, especially when there's plenty of work for them to do at a company that has the profitable monopoly on much of NZ's telecommunications.

If Telecom thought that the public would ignore it, and not support the striking techies, it thought wrong. The whole Visionstream idea may have looked good in an Excel spreadsheet, but it may end up costing Telecom far more than it was supposed to save.

The opposition Labour party is making hay over the issue, putting pressure on Communications Minister Joyce who would rather be busy with his already-delayed broadband network. Joyce won't appreciate the disruption, and it may end up costing Telecom bits of the national broadband network business.

What's worse, Northland National MP John Carter's now come out in support of the striking techies, telling his constituents not to sign the Visionstream contracts. They're "crock", Carter says, and it's not in the techies' interests to go along with them.

Telecom's wholesale customers like Orcon are also grizzling, as they have to tell their customers to expect delays to fault fixing, which is err, no fault of their own. How long before the strikes start to affect Telecom's regulatory undertakings and even its own retail and wholesale operations?

It can't be said clearer than that, really, but so far, Telecom's showing no sign of listening to the public opinion. Perhaps Reynolds has to stay out of Chorus' immediate business because of operational separation requirements, but even so, Reynolds would be wise to look up what happened last time Telecom gave the New Zealand public the two-finger salute, and not let the dispute drag on until the bitter end. The Visionstream deal just isn't going to work in its current incarnation, and needs to be dumped.

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• Telecom NZ suffering further decline
• Labour NZ appeals to Telecom's conscience
• Transfield to cut 154 staff
• Southern Cross cuts prices, ups capacity

The story didn't last long before the telco regulator, the Commerce Commission, ordered it to be taken down. And, that's just wrong. First, the details of the deal shouldn't have been kept secret to start with, but worse still, the Commerce Commission seems to agree to any amount of information suppression. All any involved party has to do is to claim that the information is "commercially sensitive" (whatever that means), and out it goes from the public documents that are published. Only a select few people who have been sworn to secrecy (typically corporate lawyers and the Commission itself, of course) have the full information.

What information is taken out? A lot, too much to list, but if you have the patience to go through the huge repository of PDF files at the Commerce Commission's website, you'll come across an enormous amount of documents with large chunks of information blanked out. There doesn't appear to be any rules as to what is redacted.

As you can imagine, this extensive removal of information means that the already Byzantine telco regulation process becomes even more cryptic. Somehow or other, the public is expected to participate in this process and submit on the issues where the details are [redacted] so that for instance the question about [redacted] becomes impossible to make [redacted] of.

If that's the case, why pretend that we have a transparent and democratic regulatory process, if random commercial sensitivities override it to the point that New Zealand media is censored as well?

Besides, of the three parties involved, only 2degrees objected to the deal being revealed. The Commerce Commission didn't, and Vodafone has been wanting to make the details available for a while now. Since other access seekers can get the same interconnection terms from Vodafone as 2degrees enjoys, there seems even less reason to prevent media from reporting on them, at pain of NZ$12,000 a day in fines and possible criminal charges.

This is really ugly.

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• Telecom NZ engineers strike
• NZ regulator censors Vodafone leak
• NZ netbank heister gets time
• 2degrees comes out limply swinging

Then there's NZ9.5c per SMS, which looks cheap compared to the usual extortionate NZ20c that Vodafone and Telecom likes to charge unless you pay in advance for larger volumes, and you get bonus value-adds for prepay SIM top-ups too. Retailers who sell the SIM cards will apparently get big rebates if the cards are topped up within 90 days, so I reckon they'll plug them hard.

But, as the National Business Review notes, the rest looks like a fizzer. No contracts, no 3G voice/data, only GPRS and EDGE support at NZ$500/gigabyte, and there's nothing much in there from 2degrees for businesses bar free GST receipts.

I'm guessing some existing Vodafone customers might get a 2degrees SIM (hint: now's the time to hit the NZ market with cheap dual-SIM phones), but the new entrant's offering doesn't look attractive and fully-featured enough to attract mass "churn".

With the launch done and dusted though, you can see why 2degrees made all that noise about mobile termination rates and besieged the regulator about it: it wanted to get the best possible deal with Vodafone. And, looking at the calling rates, 2degrees got a very sharp deal indeed, and with Telecom as well. I wouldn't be surprised if it pays both the big telcos less in termination rates than what the regulator, the Commerce Commission, is proposing.

A big question here is why 2degrees doesn't have per-second billing, when it made such a big fuss about it. The billing is per minute only, even though its wholesale deal with Vodafone allows for per-second toting up.

So, even though potential 2degrees customers are in two minds as to what's on the table, Vodafone must be laughing all the way to the bank. The UK mobile giant gets to earn a good dollar from 2degrees doing the bottom-feeding and aiming for low-value customers without risking much churn at all, especially of business users. Likewise, Telecom won't be worried and can concentrate on having a go at Vodafone.

Still though, this is only the first shot in the New Zealand mobile communications market battle. This week and next will be very interesting to watch, because the fight's only just started with 2degrees' rather limp swinging.

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• Where next for telco number three?
• Mike Quigley: The background check
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Over the past few months, there have been rumblings in NZ telco land over a loyalty discount scheme introduced by Telecom Wholesale. Put at least 90 per cent of your business with us, Dear Wholesale Customer, and we'll slash your costs, was the siren song from Telecom Wholesale.

The idea behind the loyalty discount scheme is to keep providers in the Telecom Wholesale fold, and to stop the likes of TelstraClear from unbundling further local exchanges. TelstraClear's talking about unbundling 70 exchanges next, some in provincial centres as well as the bigger cities.

Plus, the discounts are designed to keep providers away from buying wholesale services from Vodafone and Orcon that have already launched unbundling in Auckland. It appears the discount scheme came all the way from the top, from CEO Paul Reynolds, who has committed Telecom to containing unbundling at no more than 15 per cent of the country's local exchanges.

Now it looks like the wholesale discounts scheme has backfired rather badly, however. The IOG has apparently found that Telecom's in breach of its undertakings with the scheme, and if the matter goes to the Commerce Commission and is enforced in the high court, there's a NZ$10 million fine coming, backed up with NZ$500,000 a day to be paid until the situation is rectified.

Telecom, emboldened by conciliatory noises from the new National Government and small amounts of regulatory roll-back, obviously decided to test the waters with the discount scheme, to see how far it could go. Now it knows, and it's good to see that the IOG has passed its first test.

Local loop unbundling is under fire anyway, with fibre-to-the-node and providers being shut out of the sub-loop due to the recent regulatory decision that made it economically non-viable. If the wholesale discounts had gone through, Orcon, Vodafone and TelstraClear might as well have packed up their gear and kissed their million-dollar investments goodbye as it would've been the early end of LLU in NZ.

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• Femtocells on NZ broadband? No thanks
• NZ wants bigger copyright watchdog
• Vodafone reveals NZ iPhone pricing
• TelstraClear to offer 3G through Voda

It's costly and complicated to build cellular networks, perhaps a little more in NZ than other countries due to our much-maligned Resource Management Act (RMA). The RMA was introduced with good intentions, but its critics say the law makes infrastructure roll-outs expensive and slow and thus, it can be difficult for telcos to improve coverage in some areas.

Imagine if a telco could bypass the expense and awkwardness of the RMA, yet improve service for customers and boost usage at the same time. Femtocells plugged into residential DSL broadband offer that opportunity with the cost shifted partly at least to customers.

Even so, femtos would seem a hard sell in NZ. For starters, the way telco regulation has played out means most people have a landline with their broadband. Naked DSL without voice service turned out to be a fizzer here, as the regulator, the Commerce Commission, set the price so high. The cost of a landline is index-linked to inflation, and currently costs around NZ$45 a month (but its $10 less where Telecom has competition from TelstraClear, incredibly enough). Add to that the cost of broadband — NZ$20 at least, more if you want 10-20GB of data — and mobile phones for the family.

Unless there's some serious bundling, free data for mobile calls going over DSL, and cost rejigging when femtocells launch, the above adds up to a rather costly communications package indeed. A select few early adopters with deep pockets would go for it, but as it looks now, the femto offering isn't attractive for mainstream users. Then there are comparatively low monthly data caps that New Zealanders "enjoy" to consider, as well as quality of service and potential interference issues from the femto cells themselves.

It's not clear how femtocells fit in with home zones, where you have "converged" landline/mobile service within a certain radius of your house. What's more, femtocells allow integrated telcos offering fixed lines and mobile phone service to bundle these up in one neat package, increasing customer lock-in. Will Telecom or Vodafone femtocells work with other ISPs and mobile phone providers and if they do, will the pricing be competitive?

If we had affordable broadband — without the need to have a landline — and mobile phone service, I could see a space for femtos in the market. You get better coverage at home for voice and data so in theory at least, it'd make customers happier. Those conditions will only come about with more sensible regulation and increased competition in the market, so in NZ that'll probably never happen.

Alcatel will be demoing femtos next week in Auckland, and it looks like media will be shown a fixed-mobile convergence experience using a router that integrates WCDMA/HSPA with WiFi and DSL. Fixed mobile convergence is something of a hobby-horse for Alcatel, but there are some cool telephony features on display (quoting here from the marketing material):

1. One Family Number One phone number is mapped to one, or all, of the family's handsets. The handsets can either ring in sequence or at the same time.

2. Home Media Share A collaboration of presence and local breakout features providing access to radio, multimedia content, music, TV, video and text. This also features a media sync showing the e-exchange of media between the home systems and the registered mobile.

3. Intelligent notification SMS notifications for e-based events, such as the arrival at, or departure from, a femto set up.

4. Whereabouts Family members can access information about the location of their family members. This will be an awareness and reassurance display of coarse-grained information with femto proximity (at home, work, school or out).

That looks like a collection of fun features, but are they "killer" ones that people would be prepared to increase their phone bills for? I'm not convinced. Vodafone has had femtos ready for quite a while now, but apparently, the mobile giant hasn't been able to make them into an attractive proposition for customers. I also look at the above thinking much of it could be done with IP-based services, at low cost...

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The original version of the law would have seen your internet access cut off almost instantly, if accused of file sharing.

The proposed new S92A is milder: after a few "you naughty file sharer" notices, the lunatic and incorrigible infringers are hauled in front of a Copyright Tribunal. This sounds more medieval than it is, but basically, the outcome of such a Copyright Tribunal hearing ranges from mediation to damages and fines, and of course, your internet connection potentially being cut off.

That idea, X amount of strikes and whatever and you're off the net, has been rejected elsewhere, but New Zealand seems hell-bent on introducing it. Is it fair though? I don't think it can be compared to say losing your driver's licence if you drive drunk because you're obviously not endangering anyone's life while downloading stuff you shouldn't.

We think nothing of cutting off people's phones, however; but that usually happens if you don't pay your bill. Getting the phone snipped snipped for infringing on copyright does seem a bit unusual.

So is it fair then to cut off people's internet access for copyright crimes? Is it enough even? If you're going to remove the conduit along which the alleged crime takes place, should you not forfeit the implement with which you commit the felony? That is, your computer should be confiscated, along with your iPod, iPhone and other electronic and optical storage media.

Thinking about this further, going to the root of the issue might be in order, namely the internet. Think about it: the internet is at the heart of uncontrolled copyright crime. As we all know, it's impossible to filter out illegal material (Conroy, I'm looking at you) and policing it leads to expensive bureaucracies like the proposed Copyright Tribunal in New Zealand.

Why not remove the temptation completely? New Zealand would be an ideal test case for such a brave solution. Point the IPstar satellite elsewhere, and put a backhoe through the Southern Cross Cable. There are a few more undersea cables to deal with too but they're insignificant in comparison. The government's torrents, err, communications, won't be affected because they have other means of punting IP traffic in and out of the country.

Of course, this doesn't deal with existing content being infringed upon through the New Zealand Intranet, and people smuggling in stuff using memory sticks in an unpleasant manner, but it's a start I believe. What do you think? Should I send the above to copyrightact@med.govt.nz as a submission?

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It's a big player in the New Zealand market. With wholesale and retail telecom products and being backed by Telstra, you'd expect it to go hard and put the squeeze on Telecom and Vodafone. This doesn't seem to be happening though, but it's not for want of good stuff for TelstraClear to sell: the company has two HFC networks in Wellington and Christchurch, some of its own copper local loop in various towns, nationwide fibre backbone and more.

Armed with that, it ought to be able to floor much of the competition, you'd think.

Take mobile for example: since TelstraClear wants to provide full telco services to its corporate and public sector customers here, it has to offer mobile telephony. That shouldn't be a problem for it, not with Telstra's experience in the field.

Somehow or the other though, TelstraClear has managed to make a muddle of mobile. Originally, it had an agency agreement with Vodafone so that it could resell phones and devices. This came to an end about two years ago, with TelstraClear and Vodafone brawling in public and causing unflattering headlines. No one could work out why the two were fighting though, instead of working out a new agreement.

Around the same time, TelstraClear has also decided to build its own 3G network using Ericsson gear in ... a single provincial town. Again, everyone was scratching their heads as it seemed a lot of money to spend in an area where people retired to and that wasn't exactly known as being full of early adopters of cutting-edge technology. Seems Sol Trujillo thought the same and ordered the plug to be pulled on TelstraClear's Tauranga project.

TelstraClear then sorted out the mobile issue by doing a wholesale deal with Telecom, reselling the latter's CDMA/EVDO network. That was a surprise, as Telstra in Australia was ditching CDMA in favour of UMTS. Telecom too was canning CDMA, mainly because of Telstra's decision. Australia is, after all, the biggest roaming market for Telecom.

An even bigger surprise came when we learnt that TelstraClear would not have access to Telecom's shiny new XT network until 2011 at the earliest. The 3G XT network runs in the 850MHz band, and would be perfect for TelstraClear customers wanting to roam in Australia. They could use Telstra's network quite happily.

Last week, however, TelstraClear and Vodafone decided to be friends again. Yes, after the huge row two years ago, TelstraClear is once again selling Vodafone's network services (as well as Telecom's CDMA ones for the time being). This means TelstraClear customers will roam on Vodafone's network in Australia, and not Telstra's, unless the switch handsets.

TelstraClear customers could be forgiven for thinking: "Bizarre ... what's next?"

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So, what does Microsoft NZ do? It doesn't offer the pre-ordering discounts that North Americans, Europeans and the Japanese enjoy, according to the National Business Review. Instead, the pricing will be close to Vista. Not the way I'd go about rebuilding the dented confidence caused by Vista, but then again, I'm not in charge of Microsoft here.

But wait, there's more to grate on Kiwis' sensibilities. Over in Oz, paying attendees to the Microsoft Tech.Ed get an HP Mini with Win7 loaded on it. That's a super-cool offer, with some 2300 of the neato notebooks given away.

Over in New Zealand, however, a Microsoft Most Valued Professional noted rather acidly that the Australian offer is matched on this side of the Tasman by seven cameras. The Canon IXUS 100 IS are nice enough and I'm sure whoever of the attendees paying between NZ$1200 to NZ$1800 (I think it's a little cheaper than for the Oz Tech.Ed) wins one will be happy with the camera, but still...

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To recap, the new legislation contains two controversial clauses, 92A and C. The first one requires ISPs to implement a "reasonable policy" for the termination of the accounts of customers accused of file sharing.

The second one requires ISPs to remove any content hosted by them, if it's suspected of breaching copyright. Both clauses are quite draconian, and it's fair to say they establish a guilt by accusation principle in New Zealand law even though some lawyers would split hairs here and say that only punishment is meted out and no guilt is apportioned per se.

Recently, France dumped its law that would establish an internet Gestapo monitoring French users and if they're found file sharing, it snips their internet accounts.

No other democratic country in the world, as far as I know has felt it necessary to create laws that would see internet users' accounts chopped off based on allegations, so it's disappointing to see that New Zealand is once again going down the S92A route.

S92 is being reviewed, but according to the government brief:

The scope of any legislation leading to the termination of internet accounts of repeat copyright infringers is explicit and takes into account issues of due process, practicality and enforceability; the process leading to account termination is clear to all parties concerned.

Lovely. Never mind the fact that up to a third of all copyright cases brought before the courts turn out to be dodgy. Never mind that without internet access, you're severely handicapped when it comes to accessing government services. On a practical level, what do you do with telcos like TelstraClear here, which offers bundles comprising of internet, voice and mobile? Cancel the lot, or cancel the internet access and then what?

The recent tumult in Iran has shown how important the internet is to help people disseminate information, get around censorship, organise themselves and assemble.

Now, the New Zealand Government wants to take away all that. I'm sorry, but I don't think anyone voted for that, and it's time again for the electorate to hammer that home. No termination of internet accounts.

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What's interesting to note ... is how little trust and credibility Microsoft is able to bring to bear in this battle.

What triggered it was the government and Microsoft failing to agree on a blanket three-year central software licensing deal, named G2009.

Initially, the New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) cautiously greeted the negotiations' collapse as a victory, but then it dawned on them that it wasn't quite so easy. Microsoft now gets to talk to the various government agencies individually, who may or may not spend their budgets with the Redmondians. The difference is, there won't be a centrally negotiated low price as there was with G2006 this time (NZOSS disputes that the G2006 negotiations saved much money, but that's another story).

The enraged NZOSS claims Microsoft products do not represent best value for money compared to open source ones, and points out the big savings on not having to pay licensing fees and dealing with issues such as poor interoperability.

Microsoft counters this by saying licence fees are a small fraction of IT budgets in general, and that it saw the interoperability light many years ago and now plays nicely with others. Besides, what's wrong with earning money by selling software?

Both sides are correct to some extent, and I don't envy the government CIOs caught in the crossfire.

What's interesting to note, however, is how little trust and credibility Microsoft is able to bring to bear in this battle. Microsoft has some good and clever people working for them in NZ that I rate highly. They're not zealots, most use open source and participate in discussions openly and frankly, but the M sign on their foreheads means they're hobbled from the beginning in every argument.

Microsoft tends to be its own worst enemy, something the open-source movement is able to amplify with ease.

I wrote about this years ago, when Microsoft was burning through user trust and expectations with all the arrogance Bullhorn Ballmer and other Microsoft top brass could muster.

At the time, I felt it would be extremely hard if not impossible to regain user trust and I think I was right. Microsoft tends to be its own worst enemy, something the open-source movement is able to amplify with ease. The media coverage around the G2009 negotiations is a case in point.

How much does this matter though? Can the open-source movement capitalise on the lack of trust? That's far from certain. Workers spending 10-hour days in front of screens and IT managers don't tend to care about ideology, and besides, it's not their money that's being spent. And, Microsoft knows that.

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The next-generation Internet Protocol, IPv6, has been much discussed but long in coming around the world. I've been playing around with it on Linux and FreeBSD, as well as Windows, but having to use tunnel brokers overseas has put some brakes on my IPv6 experience.

This looks set to change now that FX Networks, a national backbone provider, has announced that its network is natively running IPv6 in parallel with IPv4. With IPv4 address space predicted to run out next year, New Zealand is sailing rather close to the wind on deploying IPv6.

FX Networks general manager of sales, Jamie Baddeley, says that new areas of the internet in rapidly developing countries like China will be accessible via IPv6 only. Obviously, New Zealand businesses need to be able to communicate with the IPv6 internet as well as the IPv4 addressable one, so it's good to see that FX Networks has taken the initiative. New Zealand has IPv6 IXes in Auckland and Wellington already.

Other than FX Networks, it looks like much of the New Zealand internet isn't exactly in a hurry to migrate to IPv6. This IPv6 deployment status page seems a bit out of date, but we haven't heard anything from the other major providers on their moves to the new protocol.

Perhaps they have enough IPv4 addresses and expect customers to rely on Network Address Translation (NAT)? Likewise, government sites seem firmly IPv4 only, although our academic network of sorts, KAREN, was IPv6 right from the start. I'd be interested to know what for instance the Ministries of Economic Development and the Research, Science and Technology are doing in this area — presumably, our government is already there?

The national IPv6 steering group is organising a Hui in August to highlight the need for organisations that connect to the internet to start planning the adoption of IPv6, but I fear the issue will end up in the "too hard" basket for many. If you're reading this and thinking about IPv6, now's the time to get cracking: IPv4 addresses will be rare and expensive soon. Besides, IPv6 brings other benefits than just huge address space, so it's worth the short-term pain to deal with the increased complexity.

Must poke my ISPs about going IPv6 actually, so that I can run it natively from my little corner of the internet.

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It's a big beast, about six feet tall, humming away quietly with an RF Hazard Area within, as labelled.

The antennas for the cell site are high up on a solid steel mast:

Milford is a solid, middle-class suburb, but it's not spared the urban curse of tagging as is evident from the site. The gear is all Huawei, and it appears the equipment was originally destined for Avondale Racecourse, which is miles away towards South Auckland.

That's all I can tell you really. NZ Communications hasn't, as far as I know, let anyone apart from Optus roamers onto its new network, so no idea how well the service, branded 2 Degrees, works. It's taken NZ Comms, or Econet as they started out as, some eight years to get this far. To be honest, it's quite a surprise to see that there's actually a network now. We'll see what happens in a few months time, when 2 Degrees is said to launch. August will tell.

(Images credited to Juha Saarinen/ZDNet.com.au)

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Today the company reported a 59 per cent drop in earnings, and profit down from NZ$10.9 million for last year to NZ$4.5 million this year.

Slack demand for consumer GPS is said to be the main reason for sales shrinking a fifth to NZ$139.5 million, but rising operating expenses seem to eat into Rakon's profitability as well.

The bad figures come after a hard 2008 for Rakon when the company's share price fell by two-thirds, so layoffs and a one-fifth eight-week production reduction between February and April were introduced in response to the tough times.

Now Rakon is pinning its hopes on outsourcing manufacturing to China and India, which should cut costs at the expense of workers and staff in existing facilities being laid off.

It's true that location-based services for handheld devices are becoming increasingly popular, but it may not mean we'll all have GPS phones. As anyone who has used a GPS-enabled phone, getting a fix on a satellite can be slow and difficult, not to mention impossible indoors. Plus, leaving the GPS on eats the battery life. Assisted GPS via cell-towers takes care of those problems, but Rakon is up against giants like Qualcomm in that field.

Perhaps the focus on GPS is too narrow for Rakon?

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