For full results, read Telecom hits low water mark.

AAPT
Telecom’s AAPT unit increased ebitda by 22% to $28 million during the three months to June as fewer customers yielded higher margins. For the full-year, ebitda 1% to $88 million. Operating revenues decreased by A$130 million in FY09 to A$955 million and by A$32 million in Q4 FY09 to A$226 million.

Group chief executive Paul Reynolds said a focus on more profitable on-net offers helped drive the turnaround. “We’ve stabilised this business and it’s generating cash without being helped by New Zealand.”

A “good” new deal with Telstra has strengthened AAPT’s wholesale business, said Dr Reynolds.

AAPT’s retail business has been shored up by a new $A49.95/month broadband plan, which provides unlimited off-peak downloads. “It’ a new positioning in Australia, and very interesting for us,” said Dr Reynolds.

The Australian division was also helped - like Telecom's New Zealand operations - by offshoring call centre and back office positions to the Philippines

Gen-i
The IT and telco services division suffered a 15% fall in ebidta, but this was pinned on a number of one-off factors.

The unit has recently lost its largest customer the Commonweath Bank of Australia, after deciding not to bid to retain its business, but Dr Reynolds told NBR that ditching CBA had "added to ebitda" because the contract was uneconomic. Gen-i in Australia is now focussing on the mid-market. (Read Gen-i boss Chris Quinn's take on CBA here.)

The chief executive said Gen-i's IT services wing had positive growth in ebitda.

Analysts are wary of government departments lowering IT spending, but Dr Reynolds said Gen-i's pipeline was strong, buoyed by contract wins with Air New Zealand, Contact Energy and others. The division signed $446 million new client contracts during the quarter, bringng its total to $1.2 billion.

There had been a tight focus on labour costs, said Dr Reynolds, with contractor numbers falling 50% for the full-year, and 15% for the quarter.

Chorus
Ebidta at Telecom's network infrastructure division was up 2% to $140m in Q4 over the year-ago quarter.

"780 roadside cabinets were installed by the end of the quarter, meaning more than 160,000 customers now have access to FTTN services,” said Chorus chief executive Mark Ratcliffe, CEO, Chorus. Today, more than 1000 cabinets have been rolled out covering 175,000 customers.

As at 30 June 2009, 64 exchanges had been unbundled, up from 43 in the prior quarter.

Asked about lines engineers' industrial action as they consider owner/operator contracts being offered by new Telecom contractor Visionstream, Dr Reynolds said: "So far our customer service levels have held up remarkably well and our FTTN is proceeding ahead of plan. We'll continue to give Visionstream whatever support they need to explain the very real benefits of the new contracts."

Orcon - our fourth largest ISP and a Chorus customer - has pegged to differ, issuing a service warning today that blames the industrial action for broadband installation and service delays.

Dr Reynolds side-stepped a question on crown fibre, offering only that he thought the government had come to appreciate the complexity of the issue, and that Chorus' fibre-to-the-node cabinet project should prove complimentary to the government's fibre-to-the-home scheme.

Unsurprisingly, the chief executive expressed satisfaction at the way the sub-loop unbundling price regulation issue had been resolved by the Commerce Commission (many analysts, and Telecom and Vodafone, saw the cabinet access pricing as anti-competitive).

Retail
Telecom's retail DSL marketshare stabilised at 57% during the quarter, registering its first uptick since local loop unbundling.

There was a net loss of 26,000 mobile connections, but a turnaround in the last month of the quarter after XT's launch (more on the launch, and its impact in Telecom results shine a light on XT's progress).

Dr Reynolds declined to discuss whether Telecom was still seeking a formal distribution arrangement with Apple, but said that "many" new XT customers were simplying buying a sim, and bringing their own iPhone or other handset.