Vodafone responds to 2degrees accusations, tells em to grow a pair

By Benedict Wee

Paul Brislen, Vodafone's External Manager has refuted the claim that there is a duopoly between them and Telecom evidenced by a research 2degrees commissioned which showed students in the Auckland and Dunedin region making a majority of calls and texts to phones of the same network.

He says that having a small sample size of around 100 people does not constitute a proper study and that student preference in mobile networks is hardly insightful as the majority of calls and texts are to fewer than a dozen numbers which will explain the high percentage traffic to the same network.

As for the duopoly allegations; Paul said that 2degrees is not only wrong, they're complete rubbish citing the recent incident where they took Telecom to court because they interfered with their network.

When addressing the lack of competition Paul claims that it is not only alive and well, you could argue that there are too many operators for a population our size as we've got 9 of them (Update: Vodafone, Telecom, 2degrees, TelstraClear, Black and White, CallPlus, Orcon, M2 and Compass Communications. Thanks Paul!) and not 3. He then ended the rebuttal with this:

Competition is alive and well and kicking up its heels in New Zealand. If NZ Comms (now know as 2degrees) wants to play there’s plenty of opportunity but can I just put out a heartfelt plea: Stop complaining and get on with it.

Alright then, ball's in your court 2degrees. Got a response?