Howard's way

By NZPA

Thursday 5th December 2002

Sky Riverside Casino in Hamilton seems an apt place to meet TelstraClear chief executive Rosemary Howard.

Some say it was a gamble bringing in an Australian businesswoman to shake up New Zealand's mixed-up telecommunications industry.

Then there was the added risk of taking on rival Telecom, and fellow female achiever Theresa Gattung, in Telecom's own backyard.

So the odds on Howard succeeding must have been pretty long when she moved into TelstraClear's North Shore headquarters just over a year ago.

Howard, at the casino in Hamilton this week to launch a new Internet Protocol (IP) network for the city that offers customers a slew of products and services on a single phone line, says she's not in New Zealand just to make changes.

"I'm here to change things and get them established," she says.

Howard was one of Telstra's (Australia's leading telecommunications carrier) most senior woman executives, running fast-growing business unit Telstra Wholesale.

The "50-something" mother of two married children is loving the Kiwi experience despite the demands of the job. She and her American architect husband, John Howard, have settled in Auckland.

The couple met soon after she gained a masters degree in science from Sydney University. They lived in the United Kingdom and the United States before settling in Australia.

Howard worked in the health sector, moved into teaching and then got a job for the Australian Government which resulted in her getting a position at Telstra.

At one point, while her children were still young, she worked part-time but found she was able to offer them more by being fulfilled in her job.

"You've got to work it out yourself. You make compromises," she says.

"We cannot have women feeling they can't have a family and a career. It's really important women have that right."

She considers herself a kind of "flagbearer" for women, who she says are under-represented in the business sector and on company boards in both New Zealand and Australia.

Her job as TelstraClear chief executive in the early months was to oversee the restructuring of TelstraSaturn with Clear Communications.

Telstra, owned by the Australian Government, controls 62 percent of TelstraClear, and Australian pay TV operator Austar owns the rest.

Howard describes the 650 redundancies the company made in May as "rationalising". The job losses represented about a third of the companies' 1800 New Zealand staff.

Ten months into the job she and TelstraClear had the first of three notable victories over Telecom -- a resolution of a billing row between the two, at odds since 1996, when TelstraClear was Clear Communications, over call billing and the portability of toll free 0800 and 0508 numbers.

But there are still disagreements, which last month resulted in two decisions from the newly formed Telecommunications Commission. Telecommunications commissioner Douglas Webb ordered the companies to cut interconnect prices from 2.63c to 1.13c a minute -- less than half what Telecom was charging and at the higher end of what TelstraClear was seeking.

Howard said the ruling proved Telecom's prices had been "exorbitant".

Last week Mr Webb said Telecom's wholesale prices should be 14.8 percent to 18.05 percent less than Telecom's standard retail price. TelstraClear spends about $60 million a year now on wholesaling a limited number of services from Telecom. It is Telecom's biggest wholesale customer.

In Hamilton, Howard continued her attack on Telecom, saying the company's attitude, particularly its refusal to share broadband services, was "frustrating".

Telecom is in the middle of a massive schedule of exchange upgrades that will make broadband available to 83 percent of all customer lines by early next year.

Gattung argues that if Telecom is stripped of its ability to make a fair return on its investment, it will have to reconsider its future investment strategies.

For the moment, Howard seems to have the upper hand over her Kiwi counterpart.

"It's been an exciting year," she says gleefully.

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