New Zealand First has accused Telecom of “bullying” tactics over it’s charging of Internet customers more for using local lines from 1 November 1999.

“To argue that the lines are overloaded because of it’s own promotional campaigns - and then to charge more is disingenuous,” said the Rt Hon Winston Peters MP.

“This is a clear example of an effective monopoly using market dominance to bully it’s retail customers.

“It demonstrates the failure of the New Zealand legal and regulatory regime to deliver the benefits of competition to the New Zealand consumer that the acolytes of free trade promised.

“It also demonstrates the failure of the Kiwi share in Telecom that the then Minister of State Owned Enterprises vowed would be cast in stone - as he took an axe to a piece of polystyrene.

“New Zealand First competition policy will be announced shortly. It will be pro-consumer, pro-business and pro-competition,” concluded Mr Peters.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>