I haven’t had time to read it yet, and I’m not going to print it out to read it at work over the weekend, but my gaming intentions have been put on hold so that I can read this document instead.

What am I talking about? Well, as you’ll remember, last year the Government decided that they’re going to split up Telecom into 3 parts and they passed the Telecommunications Amendment Act back in December of 2006. This act basically allows them to force Telecom to do this and to finally put some form of regulation in the market.

So today we finally get to see the draft of the document that explains how Telecom has to structure itself and how it has to split down the dotted lines. Access/Network, Wholesale and Retail.

You can find the document over here on the Ministry of Economic Development’s Website.

Last year, Act and a few others were making big noises about how you can’t take private property away from someone (or something, in this case) just because you don’t like the way they play with their property. Well, this document (from the very little I have looked at so far) suggests that the case is not about having their toys taken off them. Telecom will still own the networks, but it forces them to share their toys. This is a very major point of contention and I wanted to point it out.

Telecom still own the network. They’re not having it taken off them.

What I DO like is that the 3 companies will not be able to communicate with each other except as business partners. They’re to have completely separate payrolls and completely separate business identities. They remain owned by Telecom, but the retail company can get no benefits made available to it that Telstra or Vodafone wouldn’t have available to them also.

I will hopefully read this over the weekend, but feel free to offer spoilers. ;-)