I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by.
The New Zealand Herald.
For the past month, kiwis have been able to have their say on proposals to change our telecommunications sector.
Minister for Regulation David Seymour.
Has said these services are as essential as power and water, and that changing the way the sector is regulated will.
Affect almost every kiwi.
Changes could include introducing a consumer code, replacing or phasing out current obligation frameworks, and getting rid of obsolete rules.
But what does all of that actually mean?
And do enough New Zealanders know how these changes could affect our everyday lives. Today on the front Page, Tech common Bill Bennett is with us to dive into the recommendations and why consumers should care about how their connectivity is regulated. First off, Bill, do you think the telecommunications sector's regulatory framework is fit for purpose at the moment?
It's pretty good. I mean it's working. In terms of competition. Our market is as competitive as any market could be. Compare our telecommunications market. We save a supermarket sector and it's intensely competitive. It's so competitive that the companies sometimes winge that. You know, it's so competitive they can't make as much profit as they might make, So from that
point of view, it's working. From the consumer point of view, it's working too, because there's a lot of things in place to protect consumers and keep consumers from being exploited. So from all but from those points of view, it's working quite well. There are some issues that probably need to be addressed, and there's a regulatory review going on right now which is going.
Over those issues.
One of the problems historically is that telecommunications, like anything in technology, moves quite fast, and legislation doesn't tend to move very fast. But u Zeeland we have something called the Telecommunications Act, and I think the Telecommunications Act goes back to two thousand and one. Since two thousand and one, there's been thirteen amendments, so it's amended every couple of years, and a lot of those amendments along the way have
been to update it. So it had a really big amendment about five or six years ago to get ready for the fiber regime. So there's a huge set of new rules coming in for fiber. Fact, the last amendment I think was in March this year, so it's not like it's left to just you and get out of date.
Why are they fiddling with it then? If it's doing all right well, I.
Think two things.
One is there's a bit of ideology in that the government wants to cut down on the amount of regulations there are, full stop. And it's a good place to start because it's although it's a very complicated set of regulations, as on, the industry is relatively simple.
It's only a.
Handful of big players, so it's relatively easy to deal with. It's much easier to deal with that than some of the tackling some of the harder things, like say supermarkets. And the other thing is is there's some pressure from inside the industry to reform some of the regulation, but in general there's not a lot of push from inside the sector to reform things.
What are the most significant recommendations do you think?
Well, at the review that's coming along at the moment, they haven't got recommendations yet. They've just asked for input from the industry and from various for the groups. I think they're due to report this Thursday on that input from the industry and from stakeholders. There's I don't think there are actual recommendations at mom where there are topics that they're looking at, and one of the things they're looking at, for example, is whether the rules around fiber,
for example, are up to date. What they are, you know, it pretty much is, but there are some there are some kind of historic things in there that maybe we don't need anymore, Like a lot of the rules that are around to do with copper networks or the copper networks are going out there. But by twenty thirty the copper networks will be completely closed and we're down to perhaps one hundred and twenty thousand people that are relying on copy to day, which isn't very much in the
bigger scheme of things. So there's a lot of fussing over things that no longer really apply. It's a bit like the old thing with the London taxes having to carry a bale of hay on the top of the horses long after the horses are gone and the taxes rulled cars.
Tell me what is the telecommunications service obligations and why should it be phased out or replaced?
I know that that's something that they're looking at.
Yeah, look when when it's a historic thing. Telecom originally was the post office, and it was government owned. It was state controlled, and it was run as a public service, and it had public service obligations. And some of the things were like remote places would get a telephone box and a telephone line and they didn't have to pay more for it. So even if you were in the middle of nowhere, you had some kind of telecommunications. The industry was seen as it was you know, i'd go
back one hundred years. It was seen as a nation building exercise to have all that in place, so that you know, a cowcocky on a farm in the middle of nowhere could ring home for the weekend or whatever from a coin box. Then around about the late eighties
it got privatized. Telecom got privatized and it got bought out by at the time some overseas interests, and the obligations were put in place so that the things that had been social goods that were around forever until then continued after privatization and then when competitors came in that the idea was the things that keep happening, and some of those things are still important today, like one one one calling, for example, is part of that, and there's
a service for it's a relay service for people that are hard of hearing, so that you don't need to listen to.
A voice call.
There are other ways of getting the information for those people, and that's all paid for by the government, but it has to be provided by the industry. So what we're what the TSO is really all about. It's about getting private companies to continue those services, and there's money for that, some government money, and some of it comes from a levee which is charged on the industry, and the industry
currently pays ten million dollars a year. The amount of the company pays is based on how much money they make, so Spark would pay the most, and I think Corus pays the second most. Then it's one and two degrees and so on, and those four companies probably pay about ninety eighty five ninety percent of the levy, and all the smaller ones to pay a small amount. But the money that comes in from that is used to do things like subsidized rural calling, subsidized services that are necessary, and.
That's really what it's about.
The thing is is that it was essential when telecom was privatized for those things to carry on. It's not so important today when you've got mobile phones and satellite communications in remote places and so on, and alternative options.
But there's a there's a second area of concern, and.
It's what's called the digital divide, as a divide between rich p and poor people. And poor people have difficulty paying for some of these services, and they certainly have difficulty paying for things like computers and so on to use digital services. But there's also a rural digital divide
that is that services don't reach everywhere. The fiber network goes to eighty seven percent of the country, but that leaves thirteen percent which is off the fiber network, and some of those people are still dependent on copper lines, and that's kind of got to be looked after.
Buy everyone.
It's a sort of society problem, not an industry problem, and.
That's what it's about.
And it's as you say, it's likely to be phased out, given that we're moving to a world where everyone everything's on mobile, the copper network's gone, and if you're really stuck out in the whats you can use satellite.
So is there a fear though that if we get rid of all of the rules and regulations, that's say, a town with a population of ten could be left out and left off the map because they're not then you know, seen as profitable for those big companies to install those networks.
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right.
And but back in the day of when it was a public service, public service. I talked to the people who ran Telecom back in the eighties. I've been around this business for a long time, and I remember someone telling me that there was a phone line to the Wronger Wrong a lodge which is right at the bottom of the wire rapper on the coast, and it was the longest single stretch of copper copper wiring in the
network at the times. The head of Telecom the time told me that it costs literally costs millions every year for that line to exist. But that was being subsidized by all the people in Karori in places like that where you know where they live next to each other and right close to an exchange and it costs nothing to connect their lines, So that that kind of cross substy was there, and it's not there in a commercial era.
That's that would be true, excepted is there in some ways because the fiber network build has been subsidized and the fiber network going into rural towns has been paid for by various government projects over the years. During the lockdowns, there was a big rural development budget was a lot of that money was spent on sending viber into those regional areas.
If we don't have those kind of obligations in place, though, do we run the risk of, you know, having some towns and some people who live rurally just cut off the map. I mean, I know that three G is being phased out, and I don't know if you've tried to drive the length of the country, but there are definitely some pretty large dark spots in between there we can't get internet absolutely.
And again some of that TDL money, that levee money has been spent on something called the Rural Connectivity Group, which is it's basically the three main tailcoats that Spark two degrees and one in a joint venture and they built town was along remote roads and Chorus puts fiber between some of the tech Most of the towers have fiber to them and it goes to place. It's like Milford Sound. There's there's a fiber now that goes into Milford Sound and there's there's phone towls all along that road,
you know, and that's a pretty remote road. But we're not there with one hundred percent coverage for sure, but we improved, it's massively improved, and that those builds are generally paid for by governments or by the.
Row from the levee.
At the end of last year, Octas was here with a twelve million dollar fine over people not being able.
To connect to triple zero.
Now it has happened again, and only this time at least three people have died. What is next, brobdis If your network fails on a triple zero call, your phone is meant to switch over to a different network to get through. This is a mechanism Intelgoes must have in place as for this act. And in this instance it's
clear that even the backup plans failed. Customers warning signs were there in twenty twenty three, and now Australia's Communications Minister says the telco giant will face significant consequences.
Now we've seen in Australia recently exactly how reliant we are on our telco sectors. Australian officials have promised that Optus will face significant consequences over a system's outage and it's linked to multiple deaths. The incident left hundreds of people across more than half of the country unable to call emergency services for thirteen hours.
At least three people died as a result. Could something similar happen here?
Yes, but no, And by that I mean it's complicated. But look, when cyclone Gabrielle came through, people were cut off for a long periods of time. The networks are quite resilient, but they're not resilient enough, and Gabrielle exposed that.
Up until Gabrielle, we thought that if you had a handful of cables going into an area like I think it's Hawk's Bay that was worst affected towns like Wairoa in Hawks Bay, they had a handful of lines going into those places, but the lines went across bridges and the bridges were wiped out and a couple of lines, And it turns out that having tours three lines in isn't enough.
You need more.
So we're building resilience into the network and we've been doing a lot of work on that since Gabrielle and Gabrielle's it was quite a wake up call for that. But the other thing is is that increasingly we can use satellites to go around that as well. So if an area if part of the country's cut off because the main links are down, satellite can fill in the gaps.
And you probably won't be able to stream Netflix in high definition if you're in one of those areas time, but you will be able to make voice calls, and you will be able to make basic email calls and send text messages and on. So it's less likely in
New Zealand because we do have more resilience. But the interesting thing about that Australian episode was that the answer to it, the government sees the answer to it, and the industry sees the answer to that as fixing the regulations, which is back to what we were talking about in the first place, about those regular all those regulations that they're in place for a purpose. They're not there just because you know, pureaucrats enjoy imposing rules on the industry.
Right.
So if the Australia is looking at more regulations and we're looking at scaling them.
Back, yes, yes, there's an element of truth in that. We've probably my guess is is that the review is not going to scale them back that much. There'll be some tinkering, There'll be some things that go. There's probably a couple of things which are past their cell by date, like the rules around copper and so on. But in general, I think we have and it's widely understood and even within the industry it's widely understood. We have actually very good regulations in this area.
In terms of I mean you see something like the you know, have your say for the Telecommunications sector regulate regulatory framework and your every day key, we would just look at that and turn the page.
Right, Why should every day key we care about this?
There are people that are organized to do that. So, for example, in rural areas, there are groups that lobby for rural telecommunications.
I was that there's a Connecting a Toroa summit which was in Hamilton earlier this year, which was run by two ants now two ants is that is used to be the Telecommunications Users Group of New Zealander, but it's
now the Technology Users of New Zealand. They advocate on behalf of users and they would and so they were put in submissions to things like that, but also things like the Young Rural Doctors would put in a submission and Federated Farmers would put in, you know, put in submissions, and there are rural women's groups and so on which submit so you so rather than having to read this stuff yourself and get on top of what can be quite complicated sets of rules and so on, you know,
go and talk to your Go and talk to one of those organizations that would represent you.
Thanks for joining us, Bill, You're welcome.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at NZDHERLD, dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your.
Podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Yeah,