Gen-i recorded an improved performance at today’s Telecom briefing for this financial quarter – but that didn’t stop the questions flowing about how the XT outage would affect its clients.
There have been public signs of discontent from two major corporates won over to the new mobile network last year. Fonterra has put its XT migration on hold and the AA is debating whether to retain some Vodafone services.
Gen-i CEO Chris Quin spoke to Telecommunications Review about concerns his clients may have following the XT outage in January. He says it’s Fonterra’s intention to continue the rollout, once they are comfortable with the steps taken to ensure the network outage doesn’t occur again. In the case of AA, the XT migration to all its emergency vehicles is complete, but it’s his understanding they are reviewing whether to retain Vodafone capability alongside XT. According to Quin these are the only major XT customers to date that are rethinking their mobile strategy, although some have teetered on the verge of calling a halt: “I am aware of three or four others that have reconsidered and have decided to keep going with the XT migration,” he says.
Quin says the company is undertaking a number of steps to retain their client’s confidence, some of which he outlined to TR.
Independent Review
Details around the independent review are likely to be announced next week, but Quin shared a few insights today. It will take around six weeks to conduct, at the end of which Telecom will make public the recommendations – but not the full report.
He says corporate customers can put forward their views via an online forum and their comments will be passed on to those conducting review. Quin appeared to rule out further involvement from major users, especially when TR asked if TUANZ would be invited to participate.
“I wasn’t aware that TUANZ had expressed interest and involvement. This is our business and our service that we need to improve on and its our job to review it and make it everything we know it to be,” he says.
RNCs and cellsite amplifiers
Quin says the root cause of January’s outage was the failure of routing equipment responsible for thousands of connections and channels. This equipment is being examined to discover the component at fault.
Meanwhile, steps are being taken to improve coverage. The capacity of the two Radio Network Controllers (RNCs) has been doubled. And Telecom will install two additional RNCs in March. Quin says the RNCs were ordered in December but after the second outage they asked Alcatel Lucent to bring forward the installation a few weeks.
Telecom is also trialling tower mounted amplifiers on some cellsites to see if they will improve performance. When asked if this equipment could interfere with competitor cellsites Quin said “no”.
New clients, financial result
Quin says three new corporate clients have signed on to the XT network this week, but Toyota was the only client he could talk about publically. Toyota already has voice and data services with Gen-i.
Quin was also pleased with Gen-i’s Q2 result - a rise in EBITA of 9% on the same quarter last year as a result of $348 million in contracts closed. Quin says mobile revenues are up, and that the Australian business is looking to new markets following the loss of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia contract. He says the toughest area is data and voice services. This is due to greater competition brought about by regulation and Telecom’s separation undertakings.
Telecom New Zealand announced EBITDA of $425 million for the quarter, up 1.7%.