As far as it goes

Telecom's $5 million compensation package will have some people grabbing, some gesticulating and quite a lot doing both, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

The, ahem, "goodwill" move following the abject failure of the XT mobile network last week was more than some indicators had people asking. It will go some way towards soothing those who were irritated and inconvenienced. However, this group is by no means the extent, and perhaps not even really the heart, of Telecom's problem.

Anger at the three-day outage is not just splenetic venting. Some businesses have suffered substantial, material loss and the door is still open for individual compensation packages to be struck.

Some individuals, too, weren't just given cause for exasperation. Consider the user who was for three days without her mobile in an unfamiliar city (Christchurch) and was caught up in a medical emergency. Or the Queenstown customer who left the message "I almost lost my job coz of this."

On top of credits to prepaid and postpaid customers and retail customers, Telecom has made a particular donation to the worst-hit lower South Island, of more than $250,000, to be parcelled out to community leaders and local councils to donate to community projects for "the widest possible benefits". In the climate of reproach and recrimination, this is a gift horse that can expect a great deal of dentistry, though the mechanics of the donation, at least, give scope for the judgments on how to spend it to be made at a close-community level.

Telecom's chief executive Paul Reynolds cast the compensation as recognition of inconvenience and frustration while accepting that what customers most needed was to have confidence. He then blew it, slightly, by wrongly defining this as "confidence that we are putting every conceivable effort into ensuring that the XT network delivers for our customers".

Effort? No. People don't care half as much about the level of effort as they do about actual achievement. That means a reliable network. And that, in turns, means not only avoiding any further massive collective failures, but also a substantial mitigation of the frequent spasms of frustration by people who attest the system has not been working properly for them from day one.

To establish confidence cannot be presented as some shimmering long-term ideal. It must happen speedily. Telecom's agenda cannot be merely to hold on to existing customers. The goal has been to try to draw large corporations on to XT. Fair to say that's a decision that, at the very least, is liable to be put on hold for a while.

The independent review Telecom has commissioned will need to withstand close and suspicious scrutiny that it is sufficiently detailed and insightful. Then there must be a persuasive case that corrections have been, or are being, made. And tick-tock. This time of paralysis is going to be, at very best, a purgatory for the network, which was launched only last May.

It's not as if people don't have alternatives (and these aren't just fence-jumping to established rival networks. It's not altogether unknown for communities to set up their own mobile networks).

What is more, Telecom needs serious rehabilitation of its image as any sort of can-do outfit. Remember, 18 organisations are jostling to be part of the Government's $1.5 billion broadband roll-out over the next 10 years. As things stand, Telecom surely doesn't want its own pitch to be prefaced by the phrase: "from the people who brought you XT".

- © Fairfax NZ News

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