XTreme prejudice

OPINION: The sabre-toothed teething problems with the XT network mean Telecom must now convince a wounded and mistrustful public that the system isn't going to remain hideously unreliable, The Southland Times writes in an editorial.

Telecom spent $574 millon on a new mobile network it promised would be world class.

To date it has been third-world class.

The second major fault in three months has afflicted 10,000 customers, for days on end. That represents a wretched failure by any standard.

In fact, it's worse than that because so many people, fizzing with anger, have been reporting unreliabilties with the system since it was launched halfway through last year. They feel conned, if not betrayed.

Some users have already chucked the whole thing and taken their business elsewhere, even if the divorce is made more costly by the penalties for those who would be breaking two-to-five-year deals.

Chief executive Paul Reynolds, declaring himself livid at the failure, has commissioned an independent review of the network. This needs to be fast and incisive.

From a public relations viewpoint, it must be brutally honest. From an operational viewpoint it must fix the problem because Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand chief executive Ernie Newman overstates nothing when he warns that a third big failure would be catastrophic.

The network hasn't merely inconvenienced its customers. In some cases, where emergency response is involved, there was either actual or potential endangerment.

Many who use the network for their businesses are talking about lost income.

The company will make an announcement on compensation for "customers significantly affected by the network issues". This invites the sour interpretation that if you don't wind up compensated, your problems have been deemed insignificant.

In its future communications, Telecom would be unwise to use weasel-words like "issues". Plenty of other words were more appropriately forthright, and by tippytoeing around them the company just strengthens the perception that it still really doesn't get it.

As for what, exactly, went wrong, such answers as have arisen so far have been little more than locational; this time it involved connections between cell sites and a switch in Christchurch.

That the outage took so long to repair is deeply troubling and of course invites the reproach that the company unveiled the whole shebang too early.

It disputes this, insisting that the network underwent rigorous internal trials before being made public. New standards of rigour would appear to be in order, then.

There is, on occasion, a haughtiness about Telecom that is dislikeable. It's a potential problem for any organisation that large. Right here, right now, the company needs to be chastened and to reassert its competence.

The XT network was sold to the public as being all sorts of flash. Now its reputation needs to be rehabilitated so existing and potential users are satisfied that it is sound.

Otherwise, people will terminate their involvement. With XTreme prejudice.

- © Fairfax NZ News