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The lowest price of broadband internet access is less important than ensuring consumers move as quickly as possible to high-speed fibre-based services, says Telecommunications Minister Amy Adams. “I don’t think the over-arching criteria in this is ‘what is the cheapest option’,” Adams told BusinessDesk. “If that was the case, we’d be sticking with dial-up. I don’t think you’d find any …

Wellington International Airport, which is co-owned by Infratil and Wellington City Council, denies it’s extracting excessive profits and says the Commerce Commission has used a flawed model in assessing the transport hub’s returns. easy ways to make money The airport’s effective rate of return is 8.1 percent, within the regulator’s tolerance and has cheaper passenger landing charges than Auckland and …

Shares in telecommunications network operator Chorus jumped 12 percent after Communications Minister Amy Adams shunted out threatened price controls until the end of 2015 in a reprieve for the taxpayer-subsidised investors in the national fibre network. spy app for android The stock climbed to $3.20 in early trading on the NZX on turnover of $3.2 million from $2.86, recovering much …

Wellington International Airport, which is co-owned by Infratil and Wellington City Council, is extracting excessive profits by targeting higher returns than it should, according to the Commerce Commission. The transport hub is likely to recover between $38 million and $69 million more than it needs to for a reasonable return between 2012 and 2017, the antitrust regulator said in a …

Guinness Peat Group, the investment firm winding itself down, netted A$48.4 million from the exit of two Australian investments this week. The company sold its 47 percent stake in aluminium fabrication group Capral and its 7.7 percent holding in property group AV Jennings in on-market sales, it said. The Capral investment was sold for A$40.4 million at 22 Australian cents …

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi sent equities and the euro lower with comments that he’s concerned about the recent strength of the region’s common currency, signalling a potential rate cut. Draghi made the comments after policy makers of the ECB decided, as was widely expected, to keep the central bank’s benchmark interest rate steady at a record low 0.75 …

The Financial Markets Authority is preparing to file civil actions against the six directors of the failed finance company, Strategic Finance, saying it’s concluded they are “likely to have breached the Securities Act”. The apparent breaches were in a prospectus, advertisement and investment statement issued between March and August 2008. Strategic went into receivership in March 2010 owing approximately 11,000 …

New Zealand’s unemployment rate fell from a 13-year high in the last three months of 2012 as people stopped looking for work and the participation rate shrank to its lowest level in almost nine years. The unemployment rate fell 0.4 of a percentage point to 6.9 percent in the December quarter, as the number of people leaving the workforce fell …

Chorus’ executive in charge of building its tax-payer funded broadband programmes will leave the telecommunications network operator at the end April. General manager of network build Chris Dhyrberg decided to resign from Chorus over Christmas, and will stay on for another three months, the company said in a statement. Dhyrberg has been responsible for the roll-out of the ultra-fast broadband …

“The announcement that Mainzeal has been placed into receivership has taken many in the construction industry by surprise but should not be considered unexpected given New Zealand’s boom-bust construction market, says Stephen Selwood,” Chief Executive of New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development. “While Mainzeal is facing its own unique set of circumstances as a company there is no doubt that …