Letter from Paul Reynolds
Telecom establishes its next generation network consultation programme
With the details of Telecom's operational separation almost finalised I would like to focus on the business of working together to bring faster and better services to all our customers.
As I said at the Telecom Wholesale customer briefing in November 2007, I believe we all have a role in achieving New Zealanders' aspirations for the digital age. For our part, we have initiated the build of our next generation network (NGN), which will deliver high speed broadband up to 20 Mbps, new services like VoIP and IPTV and support future technologies.
However, our NGN is not just for Telecom. Yes, our retail business will be developing advanced products and services to supply to end-users over our new network; but as a wholesale customer, you will also interconnect with or use Telecom's NGN to deliver your services to your end-users.
So we need to work together now, at the outset, to ensure that we have a framework within which we can agree NGN interoperability and that we build a platform that meets all our requirements and works for our end-users.
I've always said that we need to get things right first time for the benefit of our customers. So I invite you to build on the great work done through industry groups like the Telecommunication's Carriers' Forum and the on-going Telecom Wholesale consultation programme, and engage with us as we establish Dialogue.
Dialogue will strengthen our consultation programme with a formal framework to capture your insights and requirements as well as discuss issues including the NGN operational and technical development, IP interconnection, new products that make the most of fibre networks and other related industry issues.
The Dialogue programme will start to address specific industry requests of near-term cabinetisation options, local peering, line powering and the B2B gateway and customer churn protocols during 2008.
Paul Reynolds
Chief Executive Officer, Telecom
December 2007