The Telecommunications Users Association, representing around 500 corporate telecommunications customers, has been criticised by some for going too lightly on Telecom over XT’s repeated failures.

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But tonight, as XT suffers its third major outage - or fourth if you count last week's botched RNC upgrade - Tuanz has unloaded with both barrels.

“Telecom needs to do something drastic to assist the customers it is repeatedly letting down,” said chief executive Ernie Newman in a statement.

“If it doesn’t, then it may be time for the government to step in as a national economic issue. This cannot be allowed to go on”

Govt should start asking hard questions
Later, to NBR, Mr Newman quantified what he meant by "stepping in".

"Compensation is not the issue," said the Tuanz boss.

"The issues are damage to the economy, repeated dislocation to peoples lives, and public safety."

"For example, suppose the next incident lasts a week and thousands of users flock to other networks - can they cope?

"If not, how can the economic damage be contained? And what options exist for XT users in the event of a catastrophic long term failure?

"The government should start asking those kind of questions; hard questions"

Labour's communications spokeswoman Clare Curran later released a press statement echoing a similar sentiment.

The government should also start examining its contingency plans, Mr Newman told NBR, given the potential public safety concerns. 

Enough is enough
Mr Newman said his organisation recognised that mobile networks were complex, and that it had tried to give Telecom the benefit of the doubt so far.

“But enough is more than enough.

“Phone networks, despite being in private ownership, are part of the nation’s essential infrastructure.

“Telecom’s repeated service failures have become a major cost to the large and small businesses who are dependent on reliable connections with their staff and customers, as well as to residential users. People’s lives and businesses are being seriously dislocated.”

In the wake of XT's second major outage, on January 27-29, Telecom announced $5 million in customer compensation, staged from $10 pre-pay credits to month-long credits for larger customers. It has also commissioned an independent investigation.

Oh the irony ... or not
Mr Newman also found it ironic that “the very day the Commerce Commission has recommended the government go soft on Telecom and Vodafone over their excessive mobile phone termination charges, Telecom’s XT mobile network is yet again out of action”.

NBR is not so sure a direct line - or any line - can be drawn between mobile interconnection rates (who telcos charge each other when calls and txts cross between their networks), and Telecom’s XT travails.

Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds argued that a more gentle glide path (that is, gradually phasing in cuts to termination rates over a period extending until 2015), would help fund the expansion of next-generation networks.

Things have gone wrong - badly, world-beatingly wrong - on XT at a technical level.

But there’s no argument that Telecom has spent a lot on XT: $574 million - as every shareholder knows as they wince at quarterly results, and mobile’s contribution to the telco’s capex bubble. The loot from MTR has been invested back in the network ... it’s just not, um, working that well right now.