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MEDIA RELEASE: EY report shows no need for copper tax

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COALITION FOR FAIR INTERNET PRICING

MEDIA RELEASE

14 DECEMBER 2013

EY REPORT SHOWS NO NEED FOR COPPER TAX OR GOVT BAILOUT

Today’s EY Australia report vindicates the Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing’s view that neither a copper tax nor a taxpayer bailout is necessary to resolve the ultra-fast broadband (UFB) issue.

“This report is good news,” a spokesman for the coalition, Paul Brislen, also chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ), said today.

“It proves that the government’s flagship UFB initiative can be built on time and within budget with a straightforward capital raising – and without a copper tax, barmy ideas like slowing broadband speeds to dial up, or any other old-fashioned state interventions or taxpayer bailouts.

“The report indicates that a capital raising by Chorus Ltd of around $500 million would solve all alleged problems with building the UFB after new fair prices for copper broadband and voice services come into force on 1 December 2014.

“Ms Adams is to be commended for commissioning this report and releasing it with plenty of time before the NZX and ASX open on Monday.

“It is the first solid, independent information on Chorus’s financial situation to be made available since the Commerce Commission announced last December the new fair prices it had determined under Steven Joyce’s Telecommunications Amendment Act 2011.”

Mr Brislen said the coalition would accept for the time being Chorus’s claims that the new fair copper prices would reduce its monopoly revenue by $1.07 billion through to 2020, although it remained sceptical the impact was so high.

He noted that Prime Minister John Key had previously rubbished early estimates the impact could be as high as $600 million and economists Covec had calculated the value of the copper tax to be no more than $449 million between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2019.

EY Australia makes clear in its report it simply accepted Chorus’s claims of a $1.07 billion funding gap.

“The coalition will be studying these numbers more carefully in the days ahead, but even if the shortfall is as much as Chorus now claims, EY Australia says that much of it can be addressed through changes to dividend policies and debt headroom,” he said.

“Our initial view is that were Chorus to raise around $500 million in new equity, it could fill its alleged funding gap without recourse to the more barmy ideas to enhance revenue, such as reducing broadband speeds to that of the old dial-up services.

“Especially in the context of the booming New Zealand economy next year, raising $500 million in new equity for what is a growth stock is undoubtedly doable.”

Mr Brislen said the report not only vindicated the coalition’s arguments that a copper tax was unnecessary but also Mr Joyce’s landmark Telecommunications Amendment Act 2011, the Commerce Commission’s implementation of that Act and Ms Adams’ decision to commission EY Australia to review Chorus.

“The government has no stronger supporter of its UFB initiative than the Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing,” Mr Brislen said.

“We look forward to working with the government to play whatever constructive role we can in fast-tracking both the building and take up of the new UFB.”

Will Chorus go for the nuclear option?

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How’s your broadband?

If you’re on copper, it’s probably “OK”, if mine is anything to go by.

I get about 12Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up, which is tedious but it is a residential area so what can you expect?

Because I’m on an unbundled line I don’t get that dramatic drop off in capability when the kids all arrive home from school and that’s just as well. I do get chucked off the computer by my own kids but that’s another story entirely.

But what if your copper line becomes fully contended and fully utilised all the time? What if your line ran as well as it does (or as poorly as it does depending on your view) when the kids come home from 8am to 8pm every day?

The key to this is contention – how many customers are allowed to use the line at any given time and the minimum rates set by the provider of the service.

With Chorus, the minimum speed for UBA is a handover of 32kbit/s.

That’s not a misprint – it’s kilobits per second. Dial up speed, in other words.

If you’re paying for broadband you might think you have a right to expect broadband speeds constantly, but unfortunately our system in New Zealand doesn’t really work like that. We’re all sharing the line and so when someone uses a lot of capacity, we get cut down to size. Sadly, that size is miniscule.

This is one of the key differences between copper and fibre. The handover speed of UBA is 32kbit/s. On the entry level fibre plan it’s 2.5Mbit/s.

That’s a world of difference and that alone means it’s worthwhile making the change from copper to fibre.

However, I’m not telling you all of this to encourage you to migrate.  No, I’m telling you this because I’m hearing a growing concern from ISPs that Chorus will begin enforcing this handover rate as a way to get more money out of the ISPs.

Currently, Chorus doesn’t enforce the handover at that speed. There’s bags of capacity, and this is a minimum remember. At worst, your service could run as slowly as 32kbit/s and still be called broadband.

Picture this – on the day Chorus switches everyone on UBA over to its bare minimum 30kbit/s, every customer in the land will ring their ISP. The call-centres will melt under the volume, the newspapers and radio will get involved, everyone will want to know where their broadband went. Simple, says the ISPs, Chorus took it off you. Chorus will say but we’re meeting our service level agreements so there’s no problem. If your ISP hasn’t bought a better service off us, that’s its fault. Talk to them.

ISPs would be forced to buy a more expensive product to service the angry customers but would either lose money on every connection or pass that cost on to customers. It’s the copper tax by a different route.

At the UBA conference earlier this year, the issue was raised and caused much alarm. The Commerce Commission directed Chorus and the ISPs to meet to discuss the matter, and they did so in early July. At that meeting, Chorus said it had no plans to introduce such a limit but it couldn’t rule out doing so in future.

One wag called this Chorus’s “nuclear option” because once you’ve done this to the industry and the customers there’s really no going back.

If this is how Chorus intends to solve its funding shortfall, by crippling copper services, then this fight is far from over. I trust saner minds will prevail.

The Chorus Conundrum

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Common sense has prevailed and we won’t see the government overrule the independence of the Commerce Commission any time soon.

While that’s good news for the long-term interests of both customers and the industry alike, it leaves us with the question of what to do about Chorus.

First, we have to determine whether there is a problem that needs fixing.

So far, we’ve been told that Chorus “could go broke” if the price of copper wholesale comes down.

I don’t buy that, and I’ve seen little evidence of that.

The numbers we’ve run are similar to Chorus’s own pronouncements in this area – that it will reduce profit (profit, not revenue) by about $80m to $100m a year. Coincidentally, Chorus pays out about $100m a year in dividend share.

To my mind, any infrastructure company that is rolling out a once-in-a-generation network wouldn’t expect to also pay a dividend at the same time. That money could and should be ploughed into the network in the interests of long term sustainable dividend payments in the years ahead.

My first preference, in that case, would be for Chorus to concentrate on the job at hand, get on with deploying the network and worry about dividend payments once the network is in place.

But Chorus has hinted darkly that there may be more afoot. If the final determination is allowed to stand, Chorus CEO Mark Ratcliffe says there will be two outcomes:

“We would have much less cash every year to invest and we simply will not be able to borrow the sums of money we need to make up to a $3 billion investment in UFB.”

This is an extraordinary situation. How can Chorus have bet so heavily on little or no change in the regulated price of its copper lines? How can they, and their investors, not have seen the writing on the wall when Minister of Communications Steven Joyce gave them a three-year delay to the introduction in order to get their house in order? That they’ve not used that time wisely is shocking and surely won’t go down well at the next board meeting, let alone the annual general meeting.

If that’s the case, the government must do something because the UFB deployment is too important to New Zealand to allow it to founder at this point.

Option 1: Do nothing.

If we do nothing, Chorus fails to deliver on its contract and defaults.

The Network Infrastructure Project Agreement (NIPA) between Chorus and the Crown is quite clear on this – default and there are penalties in terms of cash and repayments and an agreement that Chorus will relinquish control of the project to Crown Fibre Holdings, the government agency charged with overseeing the UFB deployment.

CFH would take direct control of the company and its contractors in order to see the project through to completion.

Option 2: Give Chorus more money directly.

I would need to see some clear evidence of Chorus’s problem before even countenancing this. Chorus is a private company that has bid for a contract and won. If it’s underbid, if it’s failed to secure adequate funding, if it’s failed to consider the obvious regulatory impact, then that’s it’s problem.

If we are to give Chorus more money we would be rewarding it for poor performance. That money would have to come with serious caveats on spending and should include a radical change in management, dividend policy and possibly the board as well.

Option 3: Go back out to market.

Chorus isn’t the only game in town in the fibre deployment world. If Chorus can’t do the job, perhaps Vector might like another shot at the title.

Vector missed out to Chorus on the Auckland bid – perhaps taking Auckland off Chorus and giving it to another provider might be the answer.

If Vector isn’t keen, what about the other LFCs? They’re cracking on, doing the job quickly and within budget. You don’t see them complaining that they need hundreds of millions of dollars more each year. Maybe Northpower Fibre could extend its network deployment capability down country and run the project for CFH.

Option 4: Provide bank debt assurance.

Probably the easiest thing for the government to do now is to guarantee Chorus’s debt to the bankers. I’m no financial guru, to put it mildly, and have no idea how any of this works but I’m told it’s the simplest thing the government could do with the least risk to the country. If Chorus can’t continue and make things work from there, we own them.

Option 5: Nationalise Chorus.

The share price is at its lowest point – perhaps the government should buy the company and run Chorus’s network as an open access national network, delivering service far and wide and without prejudice.

Potentially we could see one network across most of the country delivering service to ISPs and then on to users without too much overhead and red tape.

What am I saying, governments live for red tape. Much as I would like New Zealand to own its own infrastructure, I just can’t see this working. It’s in the list as a potential option but I suspect it’s unworkable.

Option 6: Cancel the UFB.

It’s all too hard, nobody really wants it, let’s walk away from the commitment. There you are, you “user groups”, you’ve got what you wanted, we’ve canned the UFB. On your head be it.

This would be a catastrophe for the country and is the furthest thing from “what we want” as users.

The UFB is essential to both New Zealand’s economic future and our social well-being. In ten years’ time, when it’s built and we’re looking at extending it into rural areas, the UFB will be a glittering jewel in our national crown and all this discussion will be dismissed as teething troubles and that’s as it should be. To abandon the project now is unthinkable and besides, I’m sure the opposition parties would have a field day and would make building the UFB into an election issue all over again.

 I don’t know what the government will decide from here. Much of it rests on the Ernst and Young report which comes out next month. From there we should get a better picture of whether there is a problem to solve and if so just what that problem is.

There is another option of course. Chorus can stop wailing, get on with the project at hand and cut its costs to be in line with international best practice and the kinds of costs we’re seeing from the other fibre companies. They can get better at digging ditches and stringing fibre from poles and concentrate on driving cost out of the business.

We can help with that – a major part of the rollout cost is eaten up in consents and legal fees, not to mention the delays, inherent in seeking permission to connect the network to each property.

This is a national upgrade programme that replaces an old network. Telecom used to have rights of access to property to deploy and replace network gear – we should make it easier and quicker for all the LFCs to do the same.

Rights of way, driveways, easements, multi-dwelling units, gated communities, new subdivisions, apartment blocks, business parks. All should be accessible by default. That would strip a huge amount of cost out of the business of deploying the UFB and that’s clearly not a bad thing.

RELEASE: Govt must resist Aussie corp bullying

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COALITION FOR FAIR INTERNET PRICING

MEDIA RELEASE

26 NOVEMBER 2013

GOVT MUST RESIST AUSSIE CORPORATE BULLYING OVER COPPER TAX

Prime Minister John Key must resist attempts by Australian-based fund manager Investors Mutual Ltd (IML) to bully his government into imposing a copper tax on every Kiwi household and business, the Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing said today.

In a letter last week to Mr Key, leaked to the National Business Review, IML’s senior portfolio manager, Simon Conn, says his fund will invest no more in New Zealand companies unless parliament legislates to override the independent regulator, the Commerce Commission, and imposes a copper tax on every Kiwi household and business.

IML’s website claims it had more than NZ$4.4 billion under management in February 2013 but it is not one of Chorus’s top twenty shareholders meaning it has less than NZ$5 million invested in the New Zealand copper lines monopolist.  Nor is IML reported to be a top twenty shareholder in Telecom New Zealand or any other Kiwi telecommunications company.

“Mr Conn seems not to know that in New Zealand, unlike other countries he may be familiar with, governments have traditionally respected the role of independent regulators and have not rolled over in the face of special-interest pleading from foreign fund managers, especially ones with so little invested in our country,” a spokeswoman for the coalition, Sue Chetwin, also chief executive of Consumer NZ, said today.

In his letter to Mr Key, Mr Conn said IML invested in Chorus because it was ‘attracted to the highly recurrent cashflows’ it generates from its copper monopoly, which ‘would enable Chorus to pay a regular and consistent dividend to shareholders’.

Last year, Chorus made monopoly profits of $171 million and paid $95 million in dividends to shareholders, of which up to $600,000 would have been paid to IML.  At the same time, Mr Key has told parliament that Chorus chair Sue Sheldon privately provided him with confidential information that indicated her company was at risk of going broke.  Despite this, the copper monopolist planned until recently to pay another $100 million to its shareholders in 2013/14 dividends.

Mr Conn’s letter also slammed the New Zealand Commerce Commission, saying it was acting unlawfully.  The NBR says he went on to attack Mr Key’s government, saying he had thought Mr Key’s election ‘heralded the return of sensible government where investments are not subject to adverse regulation and the rule of law is upheld’.

He criticised Mr Key and Communications & IT Minister Amy Adams for not immediately over-ruling the Commerce Commission and instead making ‘ambivalent’ statements about Chorus.

Ms Chetwin said Mr Conn’s letter and public comments were “arrogant and uncalled for, especially from a fund without a major stake in New Zealand or its telecommunications industry”.

“We don’t need an Australian fund manager like Mr Conn falsely claiming that our independent regulators are acting unlawfully and then going on to demand our prime minister and parliament impose extra costs on every Kiwi household and business to support his dividend flows,” she said.

“Kiwis have rejected the copper tax because it is unfair, inequitable, totally unnecessary to the completion of our new ultra-fast broadband network, and would simply be paid in dividends to people like Mr Conn.  Mr Key must resist this Australian corporate bullying,” she concluded.

Coalition stands by claims Chorus is at no risk of insolvency

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COALITION FOR FAIR INTERNET PRICING

MEDIA RELEASE

FRIDAY 11 OCTOBER 2013

COALITION STANDS BY CLAIMS CHORUS IS AT NO RISK OF INSOLVENCY

The Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing stands by its opinion that the communications it has received from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) indicate than neither exchange holds evidence to support New Zealand prime minister John Key’s assertion that Chorus Ltd (CNU) could become insolvent if a December 2012 Commerce Commission recommendation on copper broadband and voice services pricing is implemented.

The coalition also accepts that NZX does not directly comment on individual issuers or their financial positions.  The NZX has made an announcement to this effect today.  The ASX has made no comment at this time.

Yesterday the coalition released communications from both the NZX and the ASX on whether or not Chorus was in breach of its continuous disclosure obligations.

The coalition had asked the exchanges to investigate Chorus’s continuous disclosure compliance after Mr Key told national television on Friday 13 September that the copper network monopolist could go broke were the Commerce Commission draft determination implemented.

The ASX advised the coalition that it had reviewed the matter but “has not formed the view … that there is, or is likely to be, a false market in [Chorus]’s securities”.  It advised: “If you do not see a market announcement about the issues you have raised, you should assume either that our investigation has concluded that there was no breach of the Listing Rules or, if there was, it has been dealt with to our satisfaction on a confidential basis.”

The NZX advised that it “has no reason to challenge [Chorus]’s view that it remains in compliance with its continuous disclosure obligations under the NZSX Listing Rules”.

The coalition acknowledges that Chorus made a disclosure to the market on 3 December 2012 in which it said “the collective impact of these two changes [the UBA decision becoming final] … could require Chorus to fundamentally rethink its business model, capital structure and approach to dividends”.

However, the coalition does not believe this represents a disclosure of a risk that Chorus could become insolvent.  This is confirmed by the fact the monopolist’s share price fell only about 15% to NZ$2.91 after the Commerce Commission report was released, which is not an indication the market believed it had been advised of an insolvency risk.

Moreover, the following day, on 4 December 2012, Chorus announced that Standard & Poor’s had made no change to the company’s credit rating.  

Since then, the chief executive of Chorus, Mark Ratcliffe, has consistently refused to agree that his company could go broke or that the roll-out of ultra-fast broadand (UFB) is at any risk, including in interviews with Radio New Zealand and TV3’s The Nation.

 A spokeswoman for the coalition, Sue Chetwin, also chief executive of Consumer NZ, said the prime minister and other opinion leaders should desist from claiming Chorus was at risk of insolvency.

“Chorus is an important part of our economy,” she said.  “It is part of the NZX15 index, has a market capitalisation of over NZ$1 billion, is rolling out ultra-fast broadband (UFB), made a profit of NZ$171 million last year and paid NZ$95 million in dividends to its shareholders.  It will remain profitable under all pricing scenarios and any suggestion it is at risk of going broke is absurd.”

The Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing was founded by Consumer NZ, InternetNZ, and the Telecommunication Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) and is supported by CallPlus and Slingshot, the Federation of Maori Authorities, Greypower, Hautaki Trust, KiwiBlog, KLR Holdings, National Urban Maori Authorities, New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations, Orcon, Rural Women, Te Huarahi Tika Trust and the Unite Union.

A Covec study for the coalition, which has been peer reviewed by Network Strategies and found to be conservative, concluded that the government’s proposed copper tax would cost Kiwi households and businesses between $390 million and $449 million between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2019 over the price for copper broadband and voice services that Commerce Commission work indicates is fair.  The latest demands by Chorus would take this cost to Kiwi households and businesses to $979 million.

ENDS

No evidence Chorus could become insolvent

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COALITION FOR FAIR INTERNET PRICING

MEDIA RELEASE

THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER 2013 

ASX & NZX FIND NO EVIDENCE CHORUS COULD BECOME INSOLVENT

The Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges (ASX and NZX) have reported to the Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing indicating that they have found no evidence to support New Zealand prime minister John Key’s assertion that Chorus Ltd could become insolvent if his government’s proposed copper tax is not introduced.

“We are pleased with the ASX and NZX conclusions because they confirm that there is absolutely no risk of insolvency under any of the copper pricing scenarios put forward by the Commerce Commission as the independent regulator.  This means that the roll-out of the Ultra-Fast broadband can proceed as planned,” a spokeswoman for the coalition, Sue Chetwin, also chief executive of Consumer NZ, said today.

Chorus is part of the NZX15 index, has a market capitalisation of over NZ$1 billion, made a profit of NZ$171 million last year and paid NZ$95 million in dividends to its shareholders.

“Given Chorus’ financial security, we call on the government to withdraw its proposal to over-ride the Commerce Commission and impose a copper tax on Kiwi households and businesses – a tax which will benefit no one except support the profits of the copper lines monopoly,” Ms Chetwin said.

“There is no reason at all for Kiwi households and businesses to pay a dollar more for copper broadband and voice services than the Commerce Commission says is fair.

“There is no threat to Chorus’s solvency and no threat to the roll-out of Ultra-Fast Broadband.  Chorus should simply be told to get on with the job.”

Mr Key made his insolvency claims on national television on Friday 13 September, saying: “If the Commerce Commision ruling stands there’s a chance Chorus will go broke, in which case the Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) won’t be rolled out.”  He later advised media and the New Zealand Parliament that he stood by these comments.

Asked whether his view that Chorus could become insolvent was based on information not in the public domain, Mr Key told Parliament it was “based on commercial-in-confidence discussions between Chorus and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) officials” and a private telephone conservation he had with the chair of Chorus, Sue Sheldon, in December 2012.

Following the prime minister’s comments, the coalition asked the ASX and the NZX to investigate why Chorus had made no disclosure to the market about any insolvency risk as it would be required to do under both exchange’s listing rules.

On Friday 4 October, the ASX advised the coalition it had reviewed the matter but “has not formed the view … that there is, or is likely to be, a false market in [Chorus]’s securities”.  It advised: “If you do not see a market announcement about the issues you have raised, you should assume either that our investigation has concluded that there was no breach of the Listing Rules or, if there was, it has been dealt with to our satisfaction on a confidential basis.”

Yesterday, Wednesday 9 October, the NZX also advised that it “has no reason to challenge [Chorus]’s view that it remains in compliance with its continuous disclosure obligations under the NZSX Listing Rules”.

The ASX and NZX communications are available to media on request.

The Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing was founded by Consumer NZ, InternetNZ, and the Telecommunication Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) and is supported by CallPlus and Slingshot, the Federation of Maori Authorities, Greypower, Hautaki Trust, KiwiBlog, KLR Holdings, National Urban Maori Authorities, New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations, Orcon, Rural Women, Te Huarahi Tika Trust and the Unite Union.

A Covec study for the coalition, which has been peer reviewed by Network Strategies and found to be conservative, concluded that the government’s proposed copper tax would cost Kiwi households and businesses between $390 million and $449 million between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2019 over the price for copper broadband and voice services that Commerce Commission work indicates is fair.  The latest demands by Chorus would take this cost to Kiwi households and businesses to $979 million.

 

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Why don’t you still have a black and white TV?

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In the UK there are still 13,000 homes with black and white TV sets even after the digital switch over. You can still buy them and they’re ludicrously cheap – only $10 on eBay, plus shipping.

So why don’t you own one?

Because the experience with a colour TV is so much better. You can do more, you can see more, the TV sets are now the kind of science fiction experience we used to talk about in hushed tones. Flat TVs that look like windows rather than boxes, that could double for pieces of art in some cases (looking at you, Samsung, with that gorgeous $55,000 4k screen). Coupled with thousands of channels, access to Netflix and Hulu, connectivity with your mobile phone or tablet and suddenly the
TV is so much more.

The fact that you can buy a black and white TV and get perfectly good reception and perfectly good television on it at a crazy low price doesn’t stop you going out and buying the more expensive product because the more expensive product provides a better experience.

You can see where I’m going with this, I’m sure.

But what if that new flat panel LCD screen only showed the same three channels as the black and white TV and only showed them in black and white as well. Would you then spend your money on the newer set or stick with the old?
Then you’d probably have to stop and think about it. Is having a shiny new flat panel telly really that important? The difference is minimal and sure, there are some whizzy bits with it (it uses less power, it’s cooler to look at) but overall the experience is about the same.

At that point I’d probably see the wife acceptance factor kick in and find myself wilting in the face of children’s orthondonture, vet fees and a new kitchen.

We face exactly this dilemma with the move from copper to fibre.

Fibre’s entry level price is being touted as about the same as copper, but the speed is only as good as you get from VDSL2 and nowhere near as good as you get from LTE, neither of which require anyone to come to my house and drill holes in the living room wall.

Sure, it’s fibre, and there are plenty of advantages to making the leap, but you have to put up with your drive way being dug up and your garden being trampled (Enable’s before and after shots say they’ll do a good job and from what I’ve seen they do, but still…) and even then it may not work well I’ve seen failure rates of 80% reported, and frankly, I can do without having to explain to the family why we have no phone or internet for a third day running.

The selling point of fibre is that you can do more with it, so why are we throttling it back to 30Mbit/s down and 10Mbit/s up? There’s really no reason from a technical point of view. Fibre is fibre and can scream along at far more than that. Yes, this will be a contended network and yes, telcos like to differentiate so they can upsell, but when the difference between one service and the other is so close and yet the ‘cost’ of implementation is so high, you can understand why customers aren’t beating down the doors of their fibre companies demanding to be connected immediately.

Keeping the cost of copper artificially high will do nothing to push customers towards fibre. The cost of copper simply isn’t the driver toward fibre that the government thinks it is. People will move to fibre when you give them a reason to and without any promotional work, without readily available content, without a speed bump that makes people sit up and take notice, why on earth would anyone sign up?

Uptake rates are woefully low. Costs are woefully high for Chorus (we haven’t seen the costs per connection for the local fibre companies), install times are long and wait times are growing. Customers in rented property can’t get Chorus to install, customers in multi-dwelling units or down right of ways are in the too hard basket.

The problem isn’t the cost of copper. The problem is the lousy selling job we’re doing on fibre. Fix that and then we can talk about whether copper prices should go up.