No action on Telecom's 97% claim

The CommerceCommission will not be investigating if Telecom may have breached the FairTrading Act when it withdrew a claim the XT Network has 97% population coverage.

A spokespersonsays that the Commission’s Fair Trading team has completed its “initialassessment of the issue of Telecom voluntarily withdrawing its 97% populationcoverage claim for XT from its website. On the information provided there doesnot appear to be a breach of the Fair Trading Act. The Commission is notproposing to undertake a full investigation at this stage.”

TheCommission undertook an initial assessment after it was revealed at a TUANZAfter 5s event in March that the XT Network had not achieved 97% populationcoverage, as had been claimed on Telecom’s website when the network waslaunched. Gen-i head of mobile Joe Caccioppoli told the audience that XT hadfailed to achieve the same coverage as the CDMA network.

“We modelledwhat we believed was a coverage similar to CDMA, we wouldn’t have taken thatmessage to market if we didn’t,” Caccioppoli says. “The reality is you can onlymodel so much.”

See: XT doesn't cover 97% of the population -Gen-i

Coverage washighlighted in an independent report by Analysys Mason which examined failureson the network.

“Although the XT network was designed to initially provide plannedcoverage that matched the CDMA network the initial configuration of the XTnetwork and, some network build issues, led to coverage variability,” the report’sfindings read.

SinceJanuary Telecom and its technology partner Alcatel Lucent have taken steps toimprove coverage, by adding 27 new mobile sites and 115 tower mountedamplifiers, with further amplifiers being added at a rate of 30 a week.

It appears that improvements to the XT Network’s coverage have helped to win overat least one major client. In a statement yesterday, Gen-i announced it hassigned a four-year agreement with McCain Foods to move all 122 mobile voice and21 mobile data connections across from its CDMA network to the XT Network.

McCain Foodspurchasing and distribution manager Bruce Dockary says: “We are getting better coverage with XT. We certainly need coverageacross the country given we are an agriculture-based company with people insome remote spots.”