Telecom New Zealand contracted construction of its CDMA 1xRTTT network to Lucent 18 months ago, but the extension of the deal announced today will see Lucent play a greater roll in managing the networks.
"Where as previously a lot of the decision making around the network growth was in Telecom NZ's hands it now becomes a joint activity," said Bart Vogel, CEO Lucent Technologies Australia.
With management of the network outsourced to Lucent, Telecom New Zealand's General Manager Network Investment, Steven Crombie, said the telco would concentrate on its customer service and billing role.
"We know that other partners can do it better than we can because they're leveraging off their global scale and ... but we'll stick to our core function which is keeping our customers happy,"
Under the deal 50 Telecom New Zealand staff will be transferred to Lucent.
Telecom New Zealand currently uses its CDMA network to supply high-speed mobile data services to its customers. Crombie hinted that the deal could speed the introduction of other 3G-class technologies across the Tasman but did not specify what kind of services were slated for introduction.
