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It seems that no matter where I look, all I see is stories about Telecom's dismal broadband, Xtra breaking its own terms & conditions by dumping usenet without 30 days notice, our mobile phone companies bitching about a Commerce Commission recommendation that rates are slashed -- and a wealth of other "bad news" stories.

Surely there's something worthy of praise or some wonderful enterprise powered by Kiwis (or others) that's worth a mention?

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Unfortunately I see no such stories on the horizon (unless readers can suggest some) so in the meantime, it's back to the bad and the ugly.

The Commerce Commission has recommended that government move to regulate (down) the price of mobile phone calls -- about time!

Of course there's no guarantee that our idiot politicians will listen to this advice and based on their track-record in respect to other telecommunications issues, chances are that they won't.

Telecom and Vodafone have responded by saying that if prices are regulated downwards, they'll have to reduce their investment in the NZ market and that the price of mobile phones will go up.

What a load of rubbish!

These claims alone ought to be enough to show that the telcos are full of BS and really need their backside kicked.

Mobile phones are already a commodity item and can be purchased overseas (without any contract) for less than we're being charged here in NZ by our Telcos. Why, therefore, would the price of such phones need to go up if it weren't simply their desire to claw back some of the outrageous profits they'd lose as a result of regulated pricing?

And as for the investment -- well 3G services are actually cheaper to provide than previous ones.

Upgrading their systems is actually more likely to reduce the costs of operation than not upgrading!

What's more, if Telecom and Vodafone were to simply rest on their laurels, you can guarantee that someone else would step into the market and start nibbling at their heels.

I hear on NatRad this morning that Telecom are claiming "all customers are getting higher speeds" and that there's no truth to the rumours some are now slower.

Well Telecom -- I'm sorry but that's another crock of doo-doo.

How do I know?

Because in the past week or so I've noticed the latency on my DSL connection go through the roof.

Sure, once I start downloading a large file the speed is *marginally* improved, but regular web-browsing has gone to hell in a handbasket, with some complex pages failing to load completely because some of the requests for images or other elements actually time-out. I'm also getting a much higher incidence of DNS lookup failures, once again due to packet-loss and occasionally out of the ball-park latency.

Regulation?

I think it's long-overdue.

Will we see it anytime soon?

To be honest, I really don't think we will -- at least not in any meaningful form.

Cunliffe has been so very, very evasive when asked whether the government will legislate that it's almost glaringly obvious he's just trying to dodge the bullet and buy some time.

Meantime, Telecom's turning up the spin and introducing some band-aid PR-inspired product changes that look a lot better than they really are. I'm talking about "cheaper, faster" (but not necessarily both) broadband and the "Freedom" mobile plan.

For goodness sake, someone send me a good-news story -- fast!

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