A Wired World: Telecom Finds Out the Hard Way What It Costs to Stay Connected

Two network outages in just as many months may be exactly what XT subscribers need in the way of a push out the Telecom door and into the arms of a new network.

Why not? When the cellular blackout occurred in December and then in January of the following year, two things became pretty clear to me, and I’m guessing, most of the mobile users south of Taupo who had to endure a grueling number of hours without cellular service.

One, that we are increasingly dependent on our mobile phones for instant communication and connectivity to a wide world of personal and business contacts as well as for information about what’s happening in our immediate and sometimes wider environment.

Most of those who experienced degraded mobile service if not outright couldn’t use the network to send and receive calls and messages found out that it was not only extremely inconvenient but also costly to not be in contact via mobile phone. Many business owners and professionals were crippled as a result of the network blackout.
Two, service reliability is something that customers are willing to pay for, and if XT continues to act up, subscribers will not hesitate to switch to a different network.

Which is why chief executive of Telecom’s Gen-I business unit Chris Quin has been touring affected areas together with Telecom retail head Alan Gourdie. The two have been trying to calm down subscriber fears of another XT outage in order to stop the bleeding.

Aside from this, Telecom has recently announced that they will be deploying 33 extra XT cell sites to strengthen mobile coverage, saying that this was something slated for 2011, but that in light of recent setbacks, the construction of new cell sites will be pushed to start this year.

This should allay some fears and calm some nerves. Subscribers need to know that something is being done to make sure that they stay connected and that this doesn’t happen again, which is something Telecom management wants as much as subscribers do.

The network outages may have cost them more than a few subscribers jumping ship. After the second outage, Telecom has announced that it will compensate users who were affected and that the total compensation package amounted to around $5 million. Add to that the recent financial losses as its stock plummeted in the market, and you can see why Telecom must be working hard to make sure that nothing like this happens again.