Time for Minister to get on the blower

The time has come for Communications Minister Steven Joyce to demand some answers from Telecom following the latest major outage in the XT network, Labour’s Communications and IT spokesperson Clare Curran said today.

“The patience of XT customers has run out and the lack of public confidence in the mobile network requires Steven Joyce to ask some frank questions of Telecom management,” Clare Curran said.

“The Government has been more than happy to sit back and let customers make up their minds about the quality of Telecom’s XT network, but the unreliability of the network is now an infrastructure issue.

“New Zealand cannot afford to have the main network of the major telecommunications company under question. It’s not good enough and it would be good if the Minister would relay that to Telecom on behalf of customers.

“Before yesterday’s outage customers were saying enough is enough, but still they’re not getting a reliable service.

“The inconvenience of the outages has cost Kiwis time, cost businesses money, and cost Telecom a fair amount of its reputation.

“The time has well and truly come for the Minister to get involved. Steven Joyce needs to seek assurances that the technical issues Telecom is having and are being addressed to seek a permanent solution and are not just being patched up every time XT fails.

“He should also encourage Telecom to communicate with and compensate its customers who are understandably fed up.

ENDS

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