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Cables deteriorate, exchanges have to be maintained and over a period of time a lot of time, effort and money has to be expended to ensure that the PSTN retains its integrity.

This is the reason that the TSO levy was dreamed up and its goal is to fairly apportion the cost of this maintenance to all those parties who benefit from its existence.

One can hardly argue with that logic -- but it seems that exactly who owes what and why is certainly a hotbed of debate.

Stephen Bell has written an interesting piece on the IDG website today and highlights what appears to be some rather unfair application of the TSO obligation.

The Commerce Commission is keen to apportion the obligation on the basis of a provider's gross revenues which, in the case of a pure telco that directs all of its traffic through the PSTN, sounds pretty reasonable.

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But what about those companies (such as Vodafone, Counties Power, BCL, etc) who carry (and charge for) a lot of traffic that never comes close to touching any part of the local loop?

Why should those companies that provide a portion of their services through wireless connections or their own network be obliged to subsidise Telecom's monopoly to such a degree?

This sounds awfully like the churn fee associated with Telecom's UBS service doesn't it?

The definition of who is a liable party under the TSO includes someone who "provides a telecommunications service in New Zealand to end users by means of some component of a PSTN that is operated by the person”

Now this seems downright crazy!

Doesn't this clause imply that if I set up an entirely separate network of copper across the nation that had absolutely no interconnect with Telecom's copper, I would still be liable to pay large amounts of money to Telecom?

Who the hell is Theresa sleeping with to get such favours?

And why can't the cost of maintaining the PSTN be built into the interconnect charges that Telecom levies on those who route calls through this network rather than by taxing the revenues of every other telco, whether they inteconnect or not?

Surely this can't be right -- I must have read things wrong here. No government on the planet would not only endorse and support the encumbent telco's monopoly but then also force its competitors to hand over a share of their own revenues.

No, that can't be right at all.

Aussie Political Spam Continues
You'd have think that John Howard would have learned his lesson after hiring his son to spam a huge number of voters a month or two ago -- but no.

This time however, he's switched media, from email to recorded messages sent by phone -- but it's still spam.

With an election looming in probably less than 12 months, I wonder how many of our politicians are stupid enough to engage in such counter-productive practices.

Maybe we should run some kind of sweepstake. Who do you think is most likely to show the true level of their IQ and arrogance by spamming NZ voters?

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