Post
Thanks to the dopey (or corrupt) politicians who sold Aotearoa's publicly-owned in 1990 to US corporations (Bell Atlantic and Ameritech), we almost ended up with 2 parallel landline infrastructures. Fortunately a subsequent government fixed that, breaking up Telecom NZ into a retail company (Spark) and an infrastructure company (Chorus).
(1/?)
But unfortunately, they didn't do the same with the old Telecom cell phone infrastructure. So we did end up with parallel cell networks, with the second created by BellSouth, who sold it to Vodafone. It's now owned by a couple of private equity companies (including NZ-based Infratil) and trading as One NZ.
(2/?)
The regulatory actions taken by NZ governments to discipline the telecommunications oligopoly in the late 2000s and early 2010s brought mobile prices way down. Making it affordable for far more people.
But kiwis still pay some of the highest rates in the world for mobile calling, texting, and data. For services that struggle to provide sufficient coverage for our growing population. Especially in rural areas, due to our challenging terrain.
(3/?)
An ambitious government would step in and fix this failing market too. Breaking up the 2 companies that hold both cell network infrastructure and retail operations (Spark and One NZ).
If they merged the 2 cell networks into 1 (operating like Chorus), other mobile carriers wouldn't have to lease network access from their direct competitors (as ISPs used to in the Telecom days). Plus a customer of any carrier could connect to any cell tower in the country.
(4/?)
As with the breakup of Telecom, it seems likely that this would lower prices for kiwis. With at least 4 existing mobile retailers competing on a level playing field, and a much lower barrier to entry for new players.
Most likely it would also improve performance. As load could be balanced across the country's entire mobile network, and every company retailing mobile services would be contributing to the upkeep of that network.
(5/5)
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