"When a government becomes powerful, it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself." - Cicero
"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force." - George Washington
"In all that people can do for themselves, the government ought not to interfere." - Abraham Lincoln
"The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power." - John Stuart Mill
"The government's role is whatever the government defines it to be." - Helen Clark

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Deja Vu

The Government's "reforms aimed at improving competition in the telecommunications market" consist of retaining a monopoly supplier but forcing them to charge a price determined by bureaucrats rather than by the market.

This kind of strategy has been tried before. It didn't work in the Soviet Union, it isn't working for our health system and it won't work for supply of broadband. High prices provide incentives for suppliers to produce more and for customers to seek substitutes, thus decreasing demand. Without price signals there is an absolute 100% guarantee there will be shortages, either in the form of reduced performance due to network overload or even people actually being denied connections.

Even Telecom's competitors are doubtful the regulations will work, as this story mentions.

There is a familiar pattern of the government imposing regulations that cause bsuinesses to struggle, then declaring "market failure" and using that to justify even more intervention. They did it with power companies and Air New Zealand, now they're doing it in telecommunications.