Hands up - who's sick of Telecom? Well, as one of thousands of frustrated XT Mobile customers, I am.

Admittedly, I don't use my Telecom mobile very often. I am a source of amusement (and sometimes frustration) for the fact I don't check my mobile messages often enough. However, as I'm  a prepaid customer, there's only so many calls I could make given Telecom's high charges. Problem is too is that texting can sometimes be a pain in the arse for me. I am a better touch typist on my computer keyboard than on my mobile. But that's my problem.

That admission aside, I haven't bothered to check my phone in the last few days given the XT fault. I live in one of the last centres that doesn't (as of 4pm, Friday) have a fully functioning XT service - Dunedin. Those of you who might be non-Telecom customers might be asking as to why on earth I (and thousands of other Kiwis) have signed onto XT.

I have to say it's not just because of the expensive advertising campaign featuring the guy from Top Gear, amongst other personalities. You see, I had to go to Australia to see family over Christmas and if I wanted a functioning mobile service over there, I had to sign up for XT. Currently (as far as my understanding goes) no other mobile provider is able to give customers global roaming coverage apart from Telecom. Also I'm signed up as a Telecom home phone and broadband customer as they are the only company who have an unlimited cap plan (and I left Vodafone as they don't currently provide this). I need uncapped broadband for my work and study, amongst other things.

And this points to a key problem - since privatisation in 1990, Telecom has exercised a near monopoly position in our telecommunications market. One of the primary arguments against privatisation of the company in 1990 (thank you Richard Prebble and the Fourth Labour Government) was that it would become a private monopoly dedicated to extracting profit for both overseas and domestic shareholders. In seeking to do this, it has exercised its dominance over the years through, for example, denying access to its networks to competitors and raising line rental charges, etc. At the same time, it has awarded previously unheard of (in the New Zealand context) huge salary packages to its top managers who have then laid off tens of thousands of workers. These New Zealand based workers have often been replaced by more lowly paid contractors or foreign based staff (as in the case of its contact centres).

I do recognise in making these criticisms that Telecom is a regular advertiser on both this and other prominent New Zealand-based websites. But this will not stop me from criticising a Goliath corporation that has behaved sometimes recklessly and even (according to a leaked memo written during the Theresa Gattung era) stooped to lying.

I happen to agree with The Standard blog which this week made the observation that if Telecom had remained in public ownership and had the XT failure occurred, then there would be calls for the corporation to be privatised due to a state corporation supposedly failing to provide good customer service. What the XT episode should remind us all of is that Telecom needs to be re-nationalised as it has become an economically and socially irresponsible company whose accountability has been (at times) shocking. We need to take every 'last mile' of our telecommunications network back into public ownership and ensure (as part of an economic recovery programme) that investment is undertaken in order to improve Telecom's communications infrastructure to prevent massive faults like this week's from recurring.

After all, Telecom under private ownership hasn't done a good job of maintaining its infrastructure has it?