ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Death of POTS?

Oddly enough C-H,
If you look into Telecon(m) NZ they have fingers in all sorts of pies, mainly where they are given a free reign to make as much money as they like.
Mr Rogernomics (Roger Douglas) sold Telecom with the promise of a better service and lower fees, well weren't we duped!.
We now have a Monopoly that you can't even argue against.
So we are going to go Wireless here, at least Telecon has no rules on the Radio frequencies, or do they?.
Us Radio Hams are starting our own Net here and there is not a thing that Telecon or the Gov of NZ can do about it, it's in the Ham bands.

Another thing too, when mr Douglas in his infinite wisdom sold Telecom, he sold it to the lowest bidder, the Americans.
And what did they do?, basically halved the staff, to cut costs, it just kept going on.
From an original staff level of 19,000 Nation-wide, we ended up with 1000.
We went from 20 guys in Timaru to 1 guy and he did Faults at night too, he died of a heart attack oddly enough, at 37.
Good service, eh?.

Ever since the Strowger mechanical system was replaced with a filing cabinet of electronics, the uk telephone exchange buildings have not been short of space. Doesn't stop BT, the incumbent telco, from dragging their feet with opening up to competition though!

Sure seems kind of steep compared to here. The basic BT "Option 1" package is £11.50 per month (about U.S. $22 at current rates).

The folks over in the big city (Norwich) have cable services and other competition, but out here in the Norfolk boondocks there isn't any competition, at least as far as a conventional POTS local loop is concerned.