The World that Works

The Haps

A school principal spent twenty-four hours in the media complaining school lunches were mouldy. Food Safety New Zealand investigated and concluded “We think it is more than likely that the affected meals at the school had been delivered the previous Thursday, remained at the school without refrigeration, and then were accidentally re-served to students along [with] fresh meals delivered on Monday. This would explain the deterioration of the meals.” If only the media had waited for these facts before breathless and uncritical reporting that the Government or Compass were at fault.

The World that Works

People love to talk about things that don’t work. The traffic system, the health system, state housing, education, anything at all that’s done by a council… it goes on. But we’re sunny people at Free Press and everyone needs a little hope at the moment, so let’s talk about the world that works.

The build out of the mobile phone network is one thing that’s gone right in the last thirty years. Many Free Press readers will remember phones that were stuck to the wall, and if you weren’t home they just rang, alone. The change since then has been massive, and we’ve been thinking about how massive.

It’s massive because our country is massive (people forget it is the length of France and Germany combined), mountainous (it’s not a coincidence Hillary was from here), and doesn’t have many people. All those things make it hard to get coverage to people. But, nearly every urban, suburban, and town area has mobile coverage, as well as much of the road network between.

There has been no taxpayer investment. The taxpayer didn’t have to stump up a cent to build out the mobile network. (You could count the loan to Chorus that helped fund the Fibre roll out, that backbone has certainly helped connect cell towers, but it wasn’t done for that purpose and the phone companies pay to use it anyway).

The quality keeps getting better. It wasn’t so long ago that video calling belonged in science fiction movies. Now anyone can do it. Same goes for the idea of a portable TV, it sounded like something they might have in Japan. The internet has become mobile since then, one of the biggest worries of the day is people are accessing it on their phones too much.

The prices have dropped. Mobile companies started off with pay per minute. Data, when smart phones emerged, cost a fortune. Everyone had to be so careful about using the phone too much. As for using it in a foreign country, they’d bankrupt it. Now you can earn a month’s unlimited access in a couple of hours’ work.

Now, sure, the mobile network happened because people far away invented a bunch of technologies. The thing is that a massive amount of investment had to take place. It wasn’t just the cabinets of electronic equipment, backup power supplies, antenna and microwave dishes. When people couldn’t afford handsets, they were priced into the plan to absorb the cost.

The investment employed thousands of highly skilled people to design the network, mathematically model the coverage, place the cell sites, negotiate with property owners, sign the contracts, manage the projects. It’s been done by a highly skilled army of engineers, technicians, lawyers, project managers, and business people.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is the way poor people have benefited. Poor people in New Zealand today get better service from One, Spark, and 2degrees than any Government department. The Government doesn’t need to get involved to make this happen, it guarantees a minimum income (even if you don’t work) so people can afford services like mobile phones.

Improving service, falling prices, massive capital investment, a complicated business, and no taxpayer money. That’s the world that works.

On the other hand, areas like health, education, state housing, all seem to have the opposite problem. More and more money gets thrown in, but the assets are mismanaged, the costs keep going up, the service quality goes down, and the poor get the worst deal.

What can we learn from the mobile rollout that might help with things like health, education, and council services? Probably that any system that’s big and complicated with new technology and lots of capital investment shouldn’t be managed by politicians. Too much chopping and changing, too many bad incentives.

Put it another way, imagine if health had faced improving service and declining prices for the last 30 years. Imagine if the politicised system we use for health had been relied on to build the mobile network.

You wouldn’t be reading this on your phone.