Beyond Chorus to the bigger picture #1
Posted by Clare Curran on December 19th, 2013

Who would have thought when John Key made his grand statement during the 2008 election campaign that under a National Government 75% of New Zealanders will get ultrafast broadband in their homes within 10 years; that five years later his flagship scheme would be in such deep water?

The roll-out of broadband fibre is slow. Uptake is slow. Chorus, the company charged with the bulk of the contract, is under intense scrutiny as it claims it can’t do the job it was contracted to do. The regulated price of the existing copper-based broadband is under dispute by Chorus which is demanding the government intervene and overrule the Commerce Commission’s lawful role in regulating that price according to a statutory process.

All the while the government has lurched from one reactive response to another reactive response; threatening to overturn the Commerce Commission’s lawful process, then bringing forward a review which it pretended would be of the whole broadband scheme, only to focus on just the copper price and attempt to manufacture a means to overturn the Commerce Commission.

If you want to read the rest of this post click here
http://blog.labour.org.nz/2013/12/19/beyond-chorus-to-the-bigger-picture-1/

ENDS

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