Getting smart may be just the ticket

OPINION: Public transport users may wish the Transport Agency, local government and public transport operators were directing as much of their intellect into keeping buses and trains running on time as they seem to be on the intricacies of Auckland's $98 million integrated ticketing project.

At times this year, it would have been faster to hop from The Terrace to the Karori tunnel than wait for one of the many buses that should be plying that route at rush hour.

Those frustrating days aside, public transport in Wellington seems to be on a cusp. Good enough to use, but not good enough to be a particularly pleasant experience.

The Transport Agency does have a worthy vision in mind. If it could use the information from integrated ticketing systems to gather data on when and where people were getting on and off every bus and train service – combining that if necessary with bus and train location data from real-time passenger information systems, such as the one planned for Wellington – it would be in a formidable position to monitor operators' performance and better direct public transport subsidies.

It is possible information from computerised systems would be used by councils to whittle down subsidies so they were more granular – applying to fewer routes at certain times. Pushed to the extreme that could cut all the "fat" out of operators' contracts.

If councils were over-zealous that might not be in the best interests of the travelling public. Lower margins for operators might mean less investment and a worse service. On the plus side, at least councils would know whether operators were performing.

There's little doubt IBM's new Auckland data centre will be a state-of-the-art facility and is a welcome if belated investment.

But its claim that "it will be the only commercially available data centre of its calibre in New Zealand" is a fairly large one.

Asked to provide evidence, spokeswoman Kirsty Shaw referred to a list of its technical specifications. It appears to be investing in lots of back-up power systems, but nothing immediately stood out. So which of its features aren't also shared by other recently built modern data centres?

"I can't speak for other data centres," says Ms Shaw. Even though IBM is arguably doing just that by saying its data centre will be the best.

There have been so many special offers and promotions from Telecom and Vodafone this year they have probably become a bit of a blur to most consumers. But Telecom's offer of a free T-stick USB modem to its broadband customers who buy 500 megabytes of prepaid mobile data for $29.95 is one of the more aggressive.

A couple of years ago, Telecom probably wouldn't have made such an offer because of regulatory concerns. It might have been seen to be leveraging a dominant position in the fixed-line broadband market. But with a share of the broadband market that is 56 per cent and declining slowly, and about a one-third share of the mobile market, those concerns may be behind it.

TelstraClear opened the floodgates to such offers in May last year when it launched a mobile service – wholesaled from Telecom – that was only open to its broadband customers.

Making mobile broadband a cheap add-on for customers and hoping they get hooked over the holiday season could be a smart move. Telecom won't say how many T-sticks it has to "give away", saying only that the number is large.

- © Fairfax NZ News