Telecom

Telephoning, skyping, texting and emailing in Queenstown, Frankton and Arrowtown on devices just became free and easy thanks to a new service introduced by Telecom this summer.

Broadband services are returning for hundreds of thousands of Telecom customers following an outage this morning.

Telecom was receiving plenty of praise around the blogosphere yesterday after announcing it was slashing data roaming charges for travellers using their smartphones and other mobile devices overseas.

Change is inevitable for Telecom as it continues to face intense competition in every market in which it operates, new chief executive Simon Moutter says.

Telecom investors appeared frightened off yesterday by the release of a complicated set of annual accounts, dumping the stock and forcing the share price down 9% soon after the June year profit was filed.

Successful cost reductions will be a key part of the new Telecom's financial results for the six months to June expected out tomorrow, Forsyth Barr broker Tom Bliss says.

Telecom's CDMA network officially closed last night and Dunedin cellphone retailers have experienced a rush of customers not wanting to be left without working cellphones.

Telecom has lost an appeal against a court ruling that resulted in it being slapped with a $12 million penalty for using its market dominance to kneecap competitors a decade ago.

Telecom remained on track to deliver a second-half operating profit of about $560 million, acting chief executive Chris Quin said yesterday.

Telecom said it plans to de-list its shares from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and to re-list them on the Amercian over the counter (OTC) market to save costs.