Vodafone (and now Telecom) respond to Federated Farmers

A few minutes ago the Federated Farmers sent out a media release saying it was disappointed with Telecom and Vodafone pulling out of today’s rural broadband solutions meeting.

Vodafone was the quickest to respond to us.

“We’re committed to engaging with the Federated Farmers and do so regularly both formally and informally around a range of issues – including RBI. We have engaged extensively with Federated Farmers as we’ve prepared our RBI proposal,” Vodafone told us.

Telecom and Vodafone were said to have pulled out of the talks due to negotiations with the MED. An argument Federated Farmers said was an excuse “and a poor one at that”.

“As we are currently in detailed commercial negotiations with the MED we need to focus on that and stay within the process agreed with them,” continued Vodafone.

“However, we’re interested in the outcomes of today’s session and are keen to talk more as part of the open engagement we have with the Federated Farmers as soon as is feasible.”

We await Telecom’s response.

Update: We've now got a response from Telecom, which is pretty much reads the same as the one from Vodafone. Not surprising considering there's a joint Vodafone/Telecom RBI bid on the table.

Telecom: "We’re committed to engaging with the Federated Farmers and do so regularly both formally and informally around a range of issues – including RBI. We have engaged extensively with Federated Farmers as we’ve prepared our RBI proposal and with many of the organisations who attended the Federated Farmers session today.  

"We are currently in detailed commercial negotiations with the MED and need to focus on that. We felt it was premature to be discussing details of our proposal in such a forum at this point of the process, particularly given the extensive engagement we have already carried out and will continue to carry out with key rural interests.

"However, we’re very interested in the outcomes of today’s session and are keen to talk more as part of the open engagement we have with the Federated Farmers as soon as is feasible."