Tsunami Warning . . . Not!

All of us learned of the impending tsunami from the earthquake in Tonga today by calls and text messages from those abroad. The New Zealand Civil Defence (yes, that's how they spell it) has egg of their face because they didn't forewarn the populace until the threat had been deemed non-existent. There's a flurry of blame and finger-pointing going on here in the South Pacific, but we are all alive and well. Tyler was prepared to wear his swim trunks to work this morning, but it turned out to be unnecessary.

The real tsunami is the government announcement that they have required Telecom NZ to unbundle their local loop. I like to think it's because of the well-reasoned flood of emails to the Communications Minister I have let fly over the past year, but I think it's because they have finally figured out that NZ's ranking at the bottom of the OEDC is due to the restrictive monopoly held by Telecom, something we in the US figured out in . . . oh, say 1990. Let's hope our broadband uptake can match Mexico's in the next few months.