March 7, 2014 11:00am by David Farrar

Self serving crap from Vodafone

The Government has rejected a call by Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Russell Stanners to scrap the roll-out of fibre-based ultrafast broadband in much of Wellington and Christchurch.

Stanners said the cost of the UFB scheme could be cut by $500 million and taxpayers could save $145m if people instead used its cable networks in the two cities.

Vodafone was all in favour of the UFB. Then it buys the Telstra-Clear cable network and suddenly it is all no, no we don’t want UFB – use our cables instead.

InternetNZ said earlier today it strongly opposed Stanners’ proposal.

“This suggestion by Vodafone begs the question, why would Kiwis choose to make use of a second-class network when we are already on our way to having a first-class network?” chief executive Jordan Carter said.

Fibre is a future-proofed investment.

UPDATE: Also if Vodafone really wants their cable network to be used instead of fibre, then they should do what Telecom had to do, and separate it out into a separate company with open access requirements to all retailers.