?? in which it had to depend totally on poaching customers from incumbents that have all the market power to make life as difficult as possible for a newcomer. On the political side, at the moment the country is preoccupied with the rollout of the UFB/RFB and there is not a great deal of interest in seriously intervening in the mobile market to provide 2degrees with a better opportunity to increase competition. It would need at least 20%-25% penetration to be seen as a serious force and under the current circumstances the company is a long way from that. The Commerce Commission has certainly shown sympathy towards the monopolised mobile market but without political support no meaningful outcomes will be achieved. The introduction of 4G could create another opportunity to review the market situation but again there are no signs that this will happen. The significant investments needed for these upgrades will be used by the players to convince the government that they should not intervene with new regulations. There is also a real question for Telecom, who only just made their significant investments in their belated new 3G network and the subsequent extra costs involved in fixing some of the network problems that resulted from that roll out. Vodafone is also globally reviewing its mobile operations and while New Zealand might be one of their most profitable countries, the situation across the Tasman is dire. The two operations are closely linked and their future is therefore also linked. We