Watchdog's annual report has ominous signs for Vodafone and Telecom ahead of next Thursday's ruling on mobile price regulation.PLUS: RAW DATA - the Commerce Commission's full telco industry survey.
Anyone trying to read the tea leaves ahead of the Commerce Commission's final determination on mobile termination rates next Thursday - the watchdog's first ever move to regulate mobile pricing - will find its latest Annual Communications Monitoring Report interesting reading.
Telecom and Vodafone are worried that the commission will move beyond termination rates (what phone companies charge each other when mobile voice calls or txt cross networks) and also regulate so-called on-net plans, such as Vodafone's Best Mates and Telecom's My Favourites that offer steep discounts to reward customers for calling or txting others on the same network. (2degrees has argued that on-net plans are a barrier to new entrants. The incumbents have said the newcomer, with 580,000 customers, seems entirely unhindered).
The new monitoring report, covering the calendar year 2010, covers a broad range of issues, and market trends.
But some may find it significant that on-net pricing is mentioned toward the top of the document, with the commission noting that "Off-net pricing remains high and as a result on-net calling and SMS traffic dominates in New Zealand."
2degrees has long maintained that on-net plans not only hinder new entrants, but have led to New Zealanders txting more, and talking a lot less, compared to mobile customers in other countries.
ABOVE: International Average Mobile Voice Usage per Month. Source: GSMA (click to zoom).
Again, the commission's report picks up on this theme, noting:
"Mobile voice traffic per subscriber in New Zealand still remains amongst the lowest in the world with New Zealanders making an average of 79 minutes of voice calls per month compared to 120 in Australia and 198 in the UK."
Indeed, New Zealand is near the bottom of the heap, along with the impoverished nations of Tanzania, Lesotho and Azerbaijan - indicating that all thought they've got cheaper, voice plans are still too expensive, disuading Kiwis from calling on their mobiles as much as those in other developed countries.
Elsewhere, the report canvasses some familiar territory, noting a lull in telecommunications investment (not a big surprise given 2010 represents something of a gap year between three big projects - Vodafone, Telecom and 2degrees respective network builds and upgrade, and the start of the urban and rural Crown broadband intiatives).
ABOVE: More phone companies, and more cutomers, but the same size pie: total mobile retail revenue (click to zoom).
ABOVE: Mobile Connections, Fixed Line Voice and Broadband Connections (click to zoom).
As fast as Australia and Singapore
The report also summarises a previously reported survey by Akamai, which found slow broadband performance in many countries (not surprising, given Akamai is, in part, pitching its traffic optimisation service), with New Zealand on a par with Australia and Singapore but slower than the US and UK.
ABOVE: Average Download Speeds by Country (click to zoom).
At around 3Mbit/s, New Zealand's average broadband speed is miserable, by Akamai's measure, but serves as a more useful measure of how few Kiwis are willing to pay for the fastest broadband plans on offer rather than the speed of our networks. (Akamai has today released its fourth quarter 2010 report, which purports that average NZ speed has nudged up to 3.4Mbit/s, while Australia drops to 3Mbit/s).
The report also summarises recent market share trends, putting 2degrees on 8%, Telecom on 42% and Vodafone on 50% (see NBR's latest take on marketshare here).
The commission said competition had increased, but market share in New Zealand was still more concetrated than the UK or Australia.
ABOVE: MOBILE METRICS (click to zoom).
The commission notes - some would say pointedly - that although 2degrees was successful in overall share,it "had a much lower share of voice traffic".
Total mobile accounts are put at 4.7 million, or 108% of the population.
ABOVE: Total Retail Revenue by Voice and Data, Fixed and Mobile (click to zoom).
RAW DATA: read the full ANNUAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS MONITORING REPORT 2010 here (PDF).
