That the incumbents Telecom and Telefonica do not love me and I do not appreciate them is no secret: I have been battling Telefonica's and Telecom's iron grip over the last-mile local loop for several years. In the early days after privatisation, I also publicly expressed my outrage at the incumbents' decision to block "call-back" services providing US based dial tone, at the time the only option to escape the incumbents' wallet-vacuuming long distance rates. More recently, I also attended a user's protest against Telecom Argentina -right in front of the company's HQ- at the time the firm choose to start billing "traffic" per megabyte to its ADSL customers -see here, and this interview with Lawrence Lessig.

Telefonica's General Manager Juan Waehner

So, this time, after seeing Telecom Argentina's CEO Carlos Felices and Telefonica's general manager Juan Waehner exchange roses publicly, and hear them making promises about a new era of "cooperation" and vague references to "sharing networks", I decided to stop the "spin show" with some hard questions. My first question was direct: "Dear Mr. Felices, since Telecom introduced a few years ago metered ADSL and it billed new ADSL customers per megabyte transferred over your IP backbone -after a certain threshold-, how would you offer IPTV? Would you bill customers watching a news programme per megabyte as well?". OK, I admit it, I'm evil. You're not supposed to ask hard-hitting questions, that's not the Latin way.

For the record, the questions in these events must be written down in a piece of paper and then are handed over by beautiful secretaries who then pass it on to the debate moderator, who reads them, nods, and only then passes the question over to the speaker next to him to whom the question was addressed. The only event which I attended in which one was handed a microphone and was able to ask direct question -and then ask again for clarifications if the answer wasn't good enough- was Sun's Tech Days. It's no surprise that the latter was a technical conference rather than a business spin PR exercise.

I followed the path of my little "paper-missile". It reached the front desk... and then... nothing happened. That question was never answered, for the record. But probably it wasn't the organiser's fault, as there were an awful lot of questions for these execs.

INQ hack "unquiet" once again
Later that day, and while I was attending another conference about IPTV, I asked an uncomfortable question about Digital Rights Management. The keynote moderator referred to me as "Fernando continues to be unquiet about DRM..." -but more on that issue later.

Telecom Argentina's CEO, Carlos Felices

Back to the incumbent telcos and its execs, I decided to ask another uncomfortable question, this time to Telefonica's general manager, Juan Waehner. I asked if and when Telefonica would offer ADSL2 down here -like Telefonica currently does in Spain-, and also why didn't Telefonica -or when did they plan to- increase ADSL speeds in its geographical area of influence, to match those offered by Telecom Argentina in the northern halve of the country, that is, 5Mbps -despite Carlos Felices reference to five megahertz-.

"Speed is no good if the user doesn't know what to do with it" -Telefonica

Telefonica's Juan Waehner did read my second question, and answered it, in part, carefully sidestepping the issue of "ADSL2": "I'm sorry to tell you Fernando that you're poorly informed. We have raised our speeds. We even offer up to 10Mbps among our business offerings and for SMBs, also we have 5Mbps, and in our home offerings, we have 1Mbps and 2Mbps" -for the record, Telecom Argentina offers 5Mbps also for home users-. But Mr. Waehner continued: "...Probably we don't publicize those offerings enough, because, as I said earlier, we focus on the customers' experience, and if the customer has a lot of speed, but doesn't know what to do with it, we estimate it's not relevant either". Audio bits are here.

1Mbit fastest speed. Telefonica's web page as of March 29, 2007

My mind was racing, but it was pointless as I couldn't re-question him. Mr. Waehner continued: "So, we do offer multiple speeds, multiple products and services. And probably, so you don't get so unquiet, we're going to promote those services more". I have a confession to make: I was poorly informed. Poorly informed by... Telefonica's own web page, which, over here, and at the time of this writing, still shows 256 Kbps, 512Kbps, and 1Mbit as the fastest ADSL offerings for SMBs of the telco juggernaut. Another page at Telefonica Empresas, the business arm, shows 2Mbps as the fastest speed.

Another Telefonica web page touting 2Mbps as the fastest speed
Surely some mistake

If my uneasy question made the exec a bit nervous and a little patronizing and smiling in the process of answering, and that makes the firm improve its communication and advertising strategy, it's a welcome change. Oh, and incidentally, two megabits is still the fastest choice listed in Telefonica's other web page here which of course is at odds with the new 5Mbit service described here. Lots of work to do, it seems.

Competing ISP offering 2Mbit as fastest speed on Telefonica's local loops

I also couldn't help noticing that when you go to competing ISPs like Clarin's Prima/Flash, all of which operate over Telefonica's ADSL local loop monopoly, the fastest speed listed is... two megabits. Whether that is a result of competing ISPs not wanting to provide the same full speed as Telefonica's own "Speedy" branded ISP, or due to Telefonica "getting the upper hand" and not offering the highest speed to its competitors, is something only the companies know.

I might be biased in my over-criticising the telcos due to the reluctance to accept local loop unbundling and number portability, and their history of battling competition. But in any case, per the general manager's own admission, Telefonica seems to have a lot of explaining and "better advertising" to do. But wait, I get it, what good is more speed for, if "customers do not know what to do with it"?. As you readers in Blighty can see, consider yourselves lucky to have unbundling-promoting people at Ofcom.µ

L'INQs
Ofcom - Local Loop Unbundling FAQs

See also:
Telco exec touts "Five Megahertz" broadband
Latin American Triple-play conference grows, challenges Expocomm
IPTV not a priority for cable operators
Mexican Billionaire nabs WiMAX operation in Argentina
Intel creates new software R&D unit in Argentina