I think you will find that 4,300,000 New Zealanders dont give a hoot about Telecon & would love to see them get some of their own medicine back, after all their years of anti-competitive behaviour.

Vodafone's so called 'monopoly' is the result of Telecom becoming irrelevant through it's own choice of American network standards instead of European standards. Telecom did this on purpose to limit competition and it backfired. Now they are doing it again with American spec UMTS 850 band instead of the 900 band Europe and VodafoneNZ are moving too. Why deify them for this? They are serving NZer's best interests just their own.

For the record, I don't think Ericsson took either side. They merely pointed out that the two networks can get along, as they do in Australia, if appropriate measures are taken. Perhaps they should have gone with the Swedes in the first place.

I agree 100% with this story, even if the vodafone staff and fan boys who replied don't. Lets get one thing straight here - Vodafone is a fat cat multinational that has taken cash out of New Zealand for years and really doesnt give a rats about New Zealand when push comes to shove.

What amazes me is how sucessfully Vodafone have gotten away with hidding their shonky network behind slick marketing whilst operating an exceptionally clever campaign of vilifying Telecom over the years. Trouble is the game is up and the public are starting to catch on. Not a good time for an injunction.

Ask yourself this: if Vodafone really cared about New Zealand, why are they charging prepaid customers for the privalege of substandard support from Egypt?? What about the paper based billing debacle? Need I say more?

Telecom mightn't be squeaky clean but they're children compared to vodafone when it comes to doing over their customers - Just ask any Vodafone customers from outside of New Zealand.

So Voda say there is an emergency calling issue? Great emotive stuff to throw at a non tech savvy judge and the media, but hang on, Why didnt vodafone throw their toys out of their cot and seek an injunction back in November when XT was first switched on? Hmmm smelling a big red rat yet??? I am

Then there's Vodafones claims that XT is behind a some fantastic rise (something like a 154%) rise in call failures. There's two issues here - This 154% is a percentage of what? It sounds impressive but if its only a 154 percent increase on say 12 complaints then things look decidedly silly. Also how can Voda definitively know when these complaints started to be caused by XT? The various vodafone handsets I've owned plus those of friends and family have all dropped calls and behaved badly for years - way before XT was even thought of.

Having had a monopoly on GSM Vodafone has for years supplied NZ with a shonky sub-standard network that was mostly creaky 2G with isolated pockets of 3G (remember the recent complaints from iPhone owners anyone??). Now Telecom are about to launch XT ( which I understand is totally 3G) Vodafone suddenly don't look so attractive anymore and have strangely enough decided to get all legal. Not a good look for Vodafone, but great publicity for Telecom.

How about Vodafone let the engineers get on with fixing things and stop this pathetic injunction. Its only making them look like a bunch of greedy fat cats. Even if they succed in delaying the XT network, Telecom will still eventually launch it and meanwhile Vodafone have managed to alienate the market and generally confirming suspicions that they're in fact the big evil corporate who can't play fair.

Stop trying to vilify or exonerate one or the other. You can't read much into this one small incident. Both companies are greedy for the lucrative NZ market - that's it. And having only 2 of these greedy monsters is not enough to bring price reductions to mobile phone users.

Having worked for both telcos 4 things are true for both:
1.There is good demand in NZ for any mobile service
2.NZers have shown they're willing to pay way over fair market value for just basic service.
3.Both Telecom and VF want as much of that lucrative market as they can get.
4.Customers are treated like cattle and are not really valued by either company beyond the $$'s they contribute.

So just let them fight it out. Don't make such a big deal about what is hopefully not the last battle to be fought for your money. Ideally the antagonism between these 2 will drift into a price war where mobile users actually start to get some overdue financial benefits.

WCDMA/UMTS 850/2199MHz is an evolution of GSM 900. I understand more Telco's (including Vfone International) are moving towards this. You could say that Vfone leaped bounds over Telecom when it entered the market with GSM, and now Telecom are simply doing the same to them...

4G is still a pipe dream for a lot of Teleco's, and the ability to make money from a 4G service customer base remains an unknown (it's rumoured to be very costly at present), and it's my understanding that WCDMA 850 seems to be the way most providers are going.

I think Vodafone's timing (and scaremongering) is dubious. If emergency services were to be affected, and they new about this since the start of the year, why are they only bringing it to the publics attention now?

Ok that's my own limited take on it, but there is a wealth of info available online.