Ms Howard told attendees at the Telecommunications Summit a hard line is necessary because so many balls are in one court. "I would ask Telecom stop using all the things they won’t let the rest of us use so they can see what it feels like. Maybe we’d then be able cooperate better but until that happens we need a government and regulator with testicular fortitude."

She says information and communications technology are key enablers to drive up incomes as we move away from an agricultural and tourism based economy. "You have to add value when you are one of the most distant countries in the world and we’re not on that road yet," says Ms Howard.

She says New Zealand businesses right across the board have one of the lowest levels of efficiency and productivity in the developed world. "Businesses spend about three per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on telecommunications and that’s about three times too small if we’re going to be a knowledge economy," says Ms Howard.

And while the European Union has all the layers of a visionary strategy including broadcasting New Zealand, she says lacks a forward looking, pro-active convergent policy.

She says the country is seriously lagging in a number of areas including number portability and anti-spamm legislation, and without a forward looking telecommunications policy, remains in an incremental catch-up position.

"New Zealand has one of the worst broadband uptakes in the world and only seven per cent of voice minutes on mobiles because they’re so expensive to use and that’s why the Commerce Commission is having to investigate."

Ms Howard says New Zealand has a lot of work to do and has effectively left Telecom in charge of the stack. It hasn’t been decided how unbundled bitsream (UBS) is going to achieve equivalent throughput to Jetstream and move up speeds, when it is only good enough for surfing the net.

And while governments do need get involved in subsidising things, industry can’t easily make a profit from, such as Project Probe, she’s concerned that direct government investment has effectively enabled Telecom to re-monoplise. She asks what’s in place to prevent the e-Regions project being captured in a similar way. – Keith Newman