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Nicely put Brad.
Im sure that we could find a couple of soap boxes somewhere.
mclayma:Nicely put Brad.
bradstewart: Deep I really am a nice guy... I think
rodhudson: So why can't we use our Telecom phones anywhere other than in NZ ?
rodhudson: As a newcomer to this site...
Jama: BTW - The government dished out the spectrum. They gave 900MHz to BellSouth and 800MHz to Telecom. 800 was used for AMPS/TDMA (American technology) and the natural upgrade path was CDMA
rodhudson: Hi Tony. Are all your jokes of the same 'deep' calibre? I really do suspect that their decision was influenced by the idea that customers would be more 'locked in' to that technology that the GSM technology, which, technically apart, I suspect they feel did not meet their 'customer control' requirements. But this is a subjective view.
2. Regardless of any percieved 'lock-in' (which doesnt actually exist with the advent of $99 full price mobile phones with zero contract), the decision absolutely would have been made on mid-long term revenues (and sustainability of such), with a view to building the best possible network with features ahead of its competitor to attract customers, and their money.
Its hard to innovate technology-wise if both teams run the same gear, so I feel that although it would be convenient for network-jumpers if we ran 2 x GSM/WCDMA networks here, it would stifle competition in the hardware/services area to some degree (with a corresponding increase in lock-in deals via contracts and business pricing.
You simply dont spend tens of millions of dollars or more without looking for your primary goal to be financial return. If they could have got the same numbers (for the same investment) from a GSM/WCDMA system, then im sure that would have been a real option.
Even if lock-in (by way of hardware compatibiilty), or lack of it, did exist (anymore), remember it works both ways. If you have that as a barrier to customers leaving, its also a barrier to customers arrving.
sbiddle:Jama: BTW - The government dished out the spectrum. They gave 900MHz to BellSouth and 800MHz to Telecom. 800 was used for AMPS/TDMA (American technology) and the natural upgrade path was CDMA
Telecom also purchased 900Mhz (ETACSbut later renamedGSM) spectrum and subsequently lost it. During the spectrum salesBellSouth, Telecom Australia and Telecom NZ purchased ETACS bands and Telecom NZ also purchased the second AMPS band. Telecom were told by the court they couldn't have both the 2nd AMPS band and a ETACS band andthe American interests who saw DAMPS as the future gave up the ETACS band in return for 100% of the AMPS spectrum in NZ.
Many would arge it was the biggest mistake Telecom NZ made - internally they realised by the mid 90's that GSM was the way go but unfortunately Telecom had no spectrum to roll out GSM and the 1800MHz GSM bands weren't allocated then. Had Telecom hadthe ETACS spectrum band I'm sure we'd now have two GSM operators in NZ now.
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