TUANZ wants more from Telecom on structu

The Telecommunications Users Association (Tuanz) wants Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Ltd to be more open about its plans for voluntary structural separation.

It accepted at face value the argument that requiring Telecom to meet the current deadline to migrate customers into a new wholesale broadband service could expose end users to some risk of service failure, Mr Newman said.

Earlier environment

"We also see little merit in forcing Telecom to develop new operating systems designed in an earlier environment, when the move to ultra fast broadband will potentially make this investment redundant. If cost is driven into Telecom's operations wastefully, it is their customers who will pay," Mr Newman said.

Thirdly, Telecom wants to remove a requirement that it migrate 17,000 customers onto a new VoIP (voice over internet protocol) over copper service by the end of this year.

The changes to the undertakings in May

When Telecom asked for the changes to the undertakings in May, the company said it was "fully investigating structural separation in order to participate in the Government's Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative."