The situation we have at the moment is that around the country, there is a series of parked youth frequencies. They are set aside for use by non-commercial stations who fit certain criteria. Some of these frequencies were controversially awarded to Kiwi FM, a radio station owned by MediaWorks (who also own The Edge, The Rock and a bunch of other commercial stations). Kiwi FM was given these frequencies because they were using a non-commercial model and playing 100% local content.

Over the past couple weeks, it’s been announced that Kiwi FM is going to move from the 100% local content model to a 60% local, 40% international content model. It has also been said that this was approved by the Government last year. As part of this, it has been said that the frequencies granted to Kiwi FM, as well as the other parked youth frequencies, would be subject to a review.

All of these parked frequencies are high powered, this means they are allowed to be transmitted at a higher power, and therefore will reach much further. This is why you can hear stations like The Edge or ZM on the other side of Auckland when they are being broadcast from the central city, but you can only get low powered local stations such as Devonport’s The FleaFM in a very small area in comparison.

Assuming the parked frequencies do end up going to commercial stations, what will that mean? Once again, in my completely biased opinion, it means people have much less choice in terms of what they can listen to on the radio. Commercial radio will always, by definition, play what will create a profit for them. This doesn’t necessarily mean playing what people want to listen to. It can mean playing the latest track by a big label, as they are willing to pay for you to play it. It means selling out to the highest bidder in terms of content. And let’s be honest, that isn’t going to create a huge amount of variation in what’s played.

Non-commercial radio allows for that choice. It allows for student radio stations to get students on the radio. It allows for local community organisations to get on community radio stations. It allows for local music to be played by local people for local communities. But if local communities can’t hear the station, what’s the point in it being there.

Yeah, sure, there’s online streaming that can be used, but that’s not going to work in a car – mobile data is far too expensive in New Zealand to listen on a phone, and WiFi networks aren’t extensive enough. Not everyone has access to fast enough internet. I agree that online streaming is the future, but it’s too distant a future to rely on now.

I guess you can tell that I’m not in favour of selling off these frequencies. It doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t even benefit the media company that buys it, assuming it goes to either MediaWorks or The Radio Network, given neither of them can really afford it. Selling these frequencies could just be the death of radio broadcast media in this country.

I support this bill, because I feel that New Zealanders already have fewer days off than most countries. In terms of productivity, that can’t be good. The huge gap between Queens Birthday and Labour Day already drains the heck out of you, but if you lose one or two others due to a lack of ‘Mondayising’, that’s going to make things much worse.

The most common argument against this bill, as far as I’ve seen, is “they’re commemorations, not holidays” (usually with an expletive or three in there somewhere). In fact, more common is “I don’t care what happens on Waitangi Day, but ANZAC Day is a commemoration, not a holiday”. To me, that’s where their argument falls down. Both Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day are commemorations. If you don’t support this bill because one of them is a commemoration, why not Waitangi Day? Probably because it’s not really that good an argument and you’re just trying to avoid saying the standard line, of “it’ll destroy small business”.

If Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day weren’t holidays, they would be allowed for in a separate piece of legislation to the Holidays Act. One of the standards for legal interpretations, and from what I can see the most common, is that if something is within a list, they are similar and if there is a list, even if it’s not there, it includes things that are similar. Surely, as Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day are listed in the Holidays Act along with Queens Birthday, Labour Day, New Years Day, etc, they are holidays.

Let’s answer the lie of “it’ll destroy small business”. If it doesn’t destroy businesses when Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day fall during the week, then why would it destroy them if it’s Mondayised? People aren’t getting any extra days off. In fact, the Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill specifically says that in section 5:

 New section 44B inserted

• The following section is inserted after section 44A:

  “44B Transfer of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day public holidays

  • “(1) For the purposes of this subpart, if either of the public holidays listed in section 44(1)(e) or (h)—

    • “(a) falls on a Saturday or Sunday and the day would otherwise be a working day for the employee, the public holiday must be treated as falling on that day:

    • “(b) falls on a Saturday or Sunday and the day would not otherwise be a working day for the employee, the public holiday must be treated as falling on the following Monday.

    “(2) To avoid doubt, this section does not entitle an employee to more than 2 public holidays for the days listed in section 44(1)(e) or (h).”

I don’t see the issue. It’s fine for most years, but in the few years where it falls on the weekend (the news said two out of seven years a week or so ago, but that doesn’t take into account leap years, so it’s actually less than that) it’s not? That’s a load of rubbish, and I’m not buying it for a second.

Starting with HOP. An article on Transport Blog today pointed out that Snapper has, once again, missed a deadline in proving to Auckland Transport, NZTA and Thales that Snapper can work with the final HOP system. What does this mean? It means the whole process is probably going to be delayed again. Either AT will have to delay the roll-out for installing Thales machines into buses already fitted with Snapper readers or they’ll be giving Snapper more time to sort their excrement out.

A lot of people seem to be blaming Snapper for the issues here, and they are certainly not without blame. However, for me, at least 75% of the blame goes to Auckland Transport. After awarding the contract to Thales and having the decision stand up after judicial review, WHY in the name of all that is holy would you then allow Snapper the right to service some of the contract. They’ve just wasted significant amounts of time and money on a lawsuit, now you’re going to offer them at least part of what they wanted? Thales said they didn’t want this. Thales said it wouldn’t work. Thales has proven themselves to be correct. Surely, having been offered the full contract, then having NZ Bus taken away from that, Thales would have a case for breach of contract? Having not seen the contract, I can’t be sure, but I hope they’ve seriously looked at this.

Now, this correspondence I’ve had with Auckland Transport. This started after I emailed Mayor Len Brown, with my local MP, Jonathan Coleman, being copied in. The email I sent said:

 Hi,

I am writing this email because I am concerned at the complete incompetency of Maxx/Auckland Transport. I have been residing in Auckland and attending the University of Waikato for the past few years and as such, I have received a Maxx Tertiary ID Sticker in order to have subsidised public transport within Auckland. For the past three years, I have called the Maxx Call Centre regarding this, and each of the three years I have had an issue with receiving this.

In 2009/10, I was told that I need to arrange this with my tertiary provider, which is only true for universities within Auckland.

In 2010/11, after the changeover from the many councils to Auckland Council and from ARTA to Auckland Transport, I was initially told I need to talk to my tertiary provider. Knowing this is not correct, I advised the representative of the situation I had the year previous. Eventually, I was told that the forms were “being printed”, then I was told that they were being redesigned with the Auckland Transport logo instead of the ARTA logo. It wasn’t until I contacted the Mayor’s Office and my local MP Jonathan Coleman (Mayoral Reference Number xxxxxxxxxx) that I eventually received this form.

This year, it has become even worse. On January 4th, I contacted the Maxx Call Centre. For the first time, the first person I spoke with understood what I needed and told me that she would have the form sent out to me and I would receive it within three days. Not receiving the form, I called again on January 9th. I was told that the representative should not have given me a timeframe for receiving the form as that is not standard practice and that the reason I would have not received the form was there had not been a mail pickup until January 9th. I called again on January 12th having still not received the form. I was told that the department that arranges the forms had only just started back after Christmas the day before and I may receive it in the next couple days. I insisted they put through another request for the form just in case it hasn’t been sent, which the representative said they had done. Still having not received the form, I called a fourth time on January 17th and requested to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor called me back after looking into this and advised the department that deals with the forms had put it in the post on that day and I would definitely receive it by the end of the week (which would be last week). I called a fifth time today (27th January) and spoke to a supervisor who said the form was definitely sent on the 17th. I said that as I have been told that before, I was quite sceptical. I requested that the form be emailed to me. She said she will look into that and call me back.

Obviously, this is still being dealt with, however I do think the Mayor’s office needs to look into the clear incompetence of Auckland Transport. How difficult is it to send me a form? It surely shouldn’t take almost a month, even with Christmas/New Years in play. For that matter, why is the form not available either on the maxx website or at Auckland Transport service centres? I cannot understand why this form needs to be a state secret that cannot be easily accessed.

As with last year, this email is being CC’d to my local MP, Jonathan Coleman. Hopefully someone can sort this out for this year and make it so I can actually get a form next year.

Regards

Daniel Farrell

Urban Myth #1. Auckland is one of the largest, most spread out cities in the world and therefore cannot support a rail network

For over fifty years, politicians, bureaucrats and academia have been repeating this line to justify building motorways at the expense of  a rail network. Unfortunately, strategic misrepresentations of density figures are needed to make the argument work. The 1955 Master Transportation Plan overturned earlier plans for a rail network by claiming that Auckland was the most dispersed city in the world. The density data supporting this was misleading in that it divided the population by the area of the region (460 square kilometres in 1955) rather than the contiguous urbanised area (120 square kilometres in 1955) to reach an absurdly low density figure of 100 persons per square kilometre – about a quarter of the true figure of the time.

Unfortunately, the claim of world-beating urban dispersal has stuck. A year or two back John Banks once claimed Auckland was the same size as London. Last year Steven Joyce said no to rail funding because according to him Hong Kong densities are needed to support rail. In last week’s Sunday Star Times I was told that Auckland was the seventh largest city in the world by area. Simple measurement of cities by their contiguous urbanised areas reveals that Auckland’s current size is around 500 square kilometres – just scraping into the top-200 largest cities by area. Auckland’s density is currently around 2,200 persons/square kilometre – denser than Sydney, Perth or Vancouver. All these cities have quality transit systems – the difference isn’t density – it’s balanced transport policy.

Urban Myth #2. The Auckland Plan does not allow Auckland to expand enough  to accommodate housing needs

David Farrar did a piece in the Herald a week or so ago that argued that the Auckland Plan is a lemon because it doesn’t allow enough expansion to accommodate the city’s housing needs. He clearly hasn’t actually read the plan. If he did, he’d find that the plan in fact advocates expansion of the existing urban area to accommodate an additional 140,000 detached houses. Auckland’s current detached housing stock is 385,000 – an extra 140,000 takes us to 525,000 detached houses. Assume each of the 140,000 new houses contains 3 people as is the current average – that makes 420,000 people accommodated outside the current urbanised area, more than the current population of Wellington. While the plan also advocates another 300,000 dwellings within the current urbanised area, there certainly is a fair bit of urban expansion in there too!

Urban Myth #3. The ‘compact city’ plan advocated by Auckland Council means demolishing beloved suburbs and replacing them with Soviet-style high-rises

Bill Ralston did a fantastically scary piece in the Listener recently. Entitled ‘Save Our Suburbs’, it painted a hideous picture of entire suburbs such as his beloved Freemans Bay being bulldozed and replaced by high-rises. Thankfully, he’s completely wrong – even by 2040, only 11% of the region’s housing stock will be high-rise and it’ll be primarily in town centres, not suburbs. Somewhat ironically, the majority of the intensification proposed closely resembles Ralston’s own suburb. Freemans Bay is one of the densest suburbs in Auckland, and a near-perfect exemplar of the type of medium-density housing proposed for parts of Auckland. It’s as simple making more efficient use of smaller sections – high density need not mean high rise! Funnily enough, many of the great things about Freemans Bay that Ralston talks about – conviviality, community – are a direct result of its density and walkability.

Urban Myth #4. Traffic volumes will always be increasing, so we always need to be increasing motorway capacity

Another assumption that our policy-makers seem to take for granted. If the New Zealand Transport Agency were to look at their own data, they’d find that traffic volumes across parts of Auckland’s motorway network are in fact falling. Most notably, the average daily volume on the Harbour Bridge has fallen by almost 8,000 vehicles between 2007 and 2011. This trend is directly attributable to increasing petrol prices and improved public transport provision between the North Shore and the CBD. Excellent analysis on Auckland Transport Blog shows that this isn’t just an Auckland phenomenon – vehicle miles travelled on US highways have plateaued in the same period, while traffic volumes in the UK have fallen for the last three consecutive years. In spite of these trends, our politicians are still intent on spending our fuel taxes on roads less of us can afford to drive on.

Urban Myth #5. Auckland Council is overwhelmingly pro-public transport and anti-car

Auckland Council and especially Mayor Len Brown are perceived as pro-public transport. Reading the Auckland Plan, you get the same impression – rail projects are front and centre, while roads are barely mentioned. Delve a little deeper to proposed transport funding though, and lo and behold you find that of the $22 billion in transport capital expenditure proposed for the next 30 years, $5 billion is earmarked for rail projects while the rest – $17 billion – is for roads. The government still thinks the Council is putting too much into rail though…

Urban Myth #6. The City Rail Link will only benefit Auckland’s CBD

The Council’s 2010 business case for the City Rail Link (CRL) placed emphasis on the potential of the rail link to unlock the economic potential of the CBD through greater access, networking and agglomeration. Unfortunately, this focus rather pushed the transport benefits of the project off to the side. The CRL essentially ‘completes’ the rail network and eliminates the Britomart bottleneck, allowing over 50 trains per hour to run across the network, over twice the current 20. This means trains every 5 minutes across the entire suburban network to the west, east and south – twice as often as is currently possible. The CRL is also a pre-requisite for any future extensions to the rail network.

Urban Myth #7. A CBD bus tunnel will be cheaper to build than the City Rail Link

In 2011, the government rejected Auckland Council’s business case for the CRL and suggested they go back to the drawing board regarding possible alternatives. One alternative is a CBD Bus Tunnel, a proposal which was the subject of a widely-publicised study by Tony Randle. While the cost of a bus tunnel is slightly less than that of a rail tunnel, a bus tunnel would need to be accompanied by a series of Busways to ensure buses are not held up on congested city streets. The necessary Busways would cost an additional $1.7 billion, an investment that seems illogical when we already have 110km of railway tracks with over 40 stations that will do the same job.

Urban Myth #8. An Airport Rail Link will only benefit the Airport

Len Brown likes to talk about “rail to the airport” as one of his big three rail projects. But this sells the project short. The proposed rail line actually runs south from the existing Onehunga rail line, through Mangere Town Centre to the airport, and then east joining the Southern Line at Puhunui and then continuing along to central Manukau. Along the way will be FOUR new stations. It’s not just a rail link for the use of people travelling to and from the Airport – it’s a rapid transit link for a part of Auckland that currently doesn’t have many good public transport options. South Auckland’s relatively low socio-economic status is not helped by its automobile reliance. Giving South Aucklanders a genuine rapid transit option that links them to local and regional employment centres without the need for to pay for that second car will have huge socio-economic benefits.

Urban Myth #9. Aucklanders are in love with their cars – always have been, always will be

About 86% of work trips in Auckland are made by car compared to just 7% for public transport. Our per capita public transport use is just 44 trips per year – among the lowest usage rates in the world. But it hasn’t always been this way. In 1955, 58% of work trips were by public transport, and per capita public transport use was 290 trips per year – among the highest usage rates in the world. In the meantime, we ripped up our extremely well-patronised rail network, and adopted a motorway-centric transport plan. Aucklanders aren’t in love with cars – Auckland has simply got what it planned for in 1955. Plan for cars, cars are what you get.

What Auckland is learning from its current public transport investment is that if you provide a quality service, people are actually quite easy to lure out of their cars. The Northern Busway is the best case in point. At peak time, the Northern Express service departs every three minutes and cuts the travel time between Albany and the CBD from 45 to 24 minutes. As a result, daily Harbour Bridge traffic volumes have decreased by 8,000 cars between 2007 and 2011, and buses now account for a mode share of 40% of people crossing the bridge at peak time. Even the ARC’s mode share forecasts from 2010 estimated that it would take until after 2020 for mode share to reach 40% – just goes to show that if you give people a viable alternative to driving, they’ll take it up.

The article tells of a tale of woe about how the HOP card you have now is suddenly unable to work with other public transport providers. All of a sudden, we’re going to have to swap our HOP cards in mid-2012! Why did no one tell us!

Except, if you looked at the HOP website, you were told. As much as the HOP website has changed it’s tune about stage 2 of the process, completely removing it for a good three to six months, the final stage has stayed the same for the entirety of the project, the only difference is that Snapper will be involved with the final HOP product in the way that the Snapper card readers in NZ Bus services now will still read the Thales cards. All along it said at one stage or another – “What do I do?: Upgrade your HOP card”.

Yes, Auckland Transport will bear the cost of swapping the cards over. But they would have had this cost anyway. The only difference between changing to integrated ticketing with the Snapper HOP and changing with Go Rider in terms of cards is that you’re swapping with Snappers instead of Go Riders. In fact, Auckland Transport is slightly better off as they don’t have to arrange for NZ Bus to install new equipment in their buses. Ritchies, Birkenhead Transport, Howick & Eastern, Urban Express and Bayes Coachlines all have to install new equipment, with Fullers and Veolia (not entirely sure with Veolia – might be wrong, haven’t caught a train in a while) having installed it as part of the pilot test (the A-PASS). That’s a lot of companies to try and coordinate a simultaneous changeover with. With NZ Bus having already done this, it takes a huge load off Auckland Transport, given they control North Star, Waka Pacific,  Go West, Metrolink and LINK buses. That’s half of the bus brands already set up.

If the Campaign for Better Transport had an issue with this, they should have spoken up well before now. We’re hopefully (and I say hopefully as we don’t have an end date for this) half way through the changeover process. If you are behind with the times, you probably shouldn’t go to the media complaining about it. Yes, I am against the way this process has gone. I wrote about this in June and again in July. But we’re well past the point of complaining about it now. It’s happened and frankly, there’s nothing that can be done about it now.

And really, let’s be honest – the Campaign for Better Transport doesn’t have many friends in politics. Len Brown seems to be one of the few. Probably not a good idea to out your friends like that…

Referring to the East Coast as the “likely Texas of the South” was certainly not their best choice of words. When people put Texas and oil together, they think the BP disaster. And with people making a strange link between the Rena wreckage and deep sea drilling (and I emphasise strange, given there is no real link between the two at all), the public are probably not going to look kindly upon the proposal.

However, there is no doubt something like this is exactly what New Zealand needs. A New Zealand version of Britain’s North Sea Oil. If we get that and use the wealth from this wisely (which is what would set us apart from Britain on this one), not only would we end up coming out of the Global Financial Crisis, but we would likely be in a much better position than we were before the crisis.

And before critics say that oil isn’t going to create wealth due to people’s fear that the use of carbon compounds will result in some sort of apocalyptic destruction of the world, I would like to make it clear I disagree. The United States is still a huge consumer of oil, and the only way that’s ever going to change is if we run out of the stuff. China isn’t exactly stopping use either. There is more than enough demand for oil. We just need to get it.

Now, to go back to my comment about the Rena. There’s been a huge publicity campaign from organisations like the Greens since the Rena grounded saying that this is proof that deep sea oil drilling is going to be highly detrimental to the country. But I ask you, how many major disasters can you think of around oil drilling over the past decade? All I can think of is the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster. It’s not a common occurrence. Just because oil came out of the Rena doesn’t mean there will be an oil spill from deep sea oil drilling. Let’s be realistic.

Given there is no legislative definition of what good faith is in terms of Employment Law, we’ll have to go with the definition provided by the Department of Labour:

In broad terms, this means that both employers and employees must:

• act honestly, openly, and without hidden or ulterior motives
• raise issues in a fair and timely way
• be constructive and cooperative
• be proactive in providing each other with relevant information and consider all information provided
• respond promptly and thoroughly to reasonable requests and concerns
• keep an open mind, listen to each other and be prepared to change opinion about a particular situation or behaviour, and
• treat each other respectfully

Source: http://www.dol.govt.nz/er/solvingproblems/keyprinciples/goodfaith.asp

What has happened with the Ports of Auckland saga is quite bizarre. The Ports of Auckland have offered a 10% pay rise to the Maritime Union, with the condition that the current requirement that 50% of staff must be full time, permanent workers, being removed so that every worker will be employed on a casual basis. This was turned down by the Maritime Union, came back with a counteroffer of a 2.5% pay rise with conditions remaining the same.

Meanwhile, Auckland Mayor, Len Brown, makes no real comment on the issue aside from subtle hints that he would be in support of the Maritime Union – not really surprising given his left wing political ties. This is significant though, given the Ports of Auckland is owned by the Auckland Council.

Ports of Auckland have announced that two major clients have removed their business from the Ports of Auckland given the supposed “instability” caused by the actions of the wharfies. Some suggestion has come up that this was orchestrated by the Ports of Auckland, though this has not been proven and most likely will never be proven.

Ports of Auckland’s CEO has suggested that he has been working on this for 11 months and is now tired of the tactics by the Maritime Union. This surprising, given he joined Ports of Auckland, according to their website in “early 2011″ and the contract expired in September 2011 – he can’t have been their for more than nine months.

Helen Kelly, head of the Council of Trade Unions went into mediation. She came out saying that it seems there is something going on here that we aren’t aware of, given no matter what the union suggested, the Ports of Auckland refused it point-blanc.

During the Christmas break, the head of the Maritime Union stayed in Auckland trying to negotiate further. That wasn’t possible though, with the CEO of Ports of Auckland spending Christmas in the Bay of Plenty.

Ports of Auckland have also said that they are looking at making the wharfies redundant, at a cost of $8 million then rehiring them as casual workers.

I cannot see any good faith here from the side of the Ports of Auckland. The Maritime Union has tried their best to offer good faith, but the Ports of Auckland seems to be avoiding good faith at all costs. I hope that any redundancy is taken to court as I would say there has been a severe breach of good faith and the redundancy could be considered constructive dismissal.

I has become clear that Christchurch isn’t going to stop shaking any time soon. I saw yesterday that someone who was around last time Christchurch started shaking (about 100 years ago, I believe) said it kept going for ten years. And after it was said on 3 News last night that we could be looking at an earthquake of 7+ in the very near future, plus with number of earthquakes 5+ in the past couple weeks, you have to rethink the situation.

Personally, I do not see how it’s viable to rebuild the Christchurch CBD in the same place. I know that it’s seen as a psychological thing, where people will finally be able to accept it’s over when that’s rebuilt, but I don’t think it’s appropriate, firstly because even if this series of earthquakes stop, it will almost assuredly happen again in a century as it did a century before. Let’s not put the future generations of New Zealanders at risk.

I also don’t see how it makes sense to rebuild there, given there are still bodies in that area. By now, they will have decomposed. You won’t find the bodies. It doesn’t seem right that you just continue live on top of the final resting space of someone.

To me, the solution is get rid of all the buildings in the CBD Red Zone and turn it into a green space. A massive public park or something like that. A memorial to each of the people who died in February. You could put plaques right throughout the area. It could be used as a public space. If it’s a bunch of grass and trees, it doesn’t really matter that much if there’s a massive crack in the ground – you just put fences around the crack and carry on. Not only would this be a brilliant way to remember the people who died, it would also be a brilliant way to save lives in the future.

This has been suggested by other people in other forums and the response from people in Christchurch is almost always “you don’t know what it’s like here, so you can’t talk”. Once again, it’s back to the psychological thing of the rebuilding of the CBD signaling it’s over. I’m not saying don’t build a CBD. But build it in the west where the area is largely unscathed. Sure, I don’t know what it’s like to be living through this, and I can honestly say I don’t know how the people of Christchurch are staying even mildly sane. I have a lot of respect for these people. But let’s not sacrifice the lives of people in the future in order to make you feel better now.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,100 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

A few weeks back, I posted a letter that I wrote to Auckland Transport saying I was disappointed at two things. Firstly, the poor service I received from the Maxx call centre and secondly the fact they don’t offer many places to get tertiary bus cards. Two days ago, I received a reply:

Good afternoon Daniel,

Your customer reference number is : AT2011/xxxxxx

This response has been provided by our Public Transport Unit.

Thank you for your enquiry regarding service from MAXX.

Customers are, unfortunately, unable to top up their Ritchies Fast Pass card at Britomart as there is not enough space currently to accommodate all bus operators’ ticket machines.

However, we are pleased to advise that, as part of Auckland Transport’s current Britomart ticket office redesign, there will be space available at the counters to accommodate all bus operator machines. This work will be completed over the Christmas holiday period.

Auckland Transport will be negotiating with the various bus operators in the New Year regarding the placement of their ticket machines in the additional space created by the redesign.

We can also advise that Auckland Transport will discuss with Ritchies the possibility of providing more ticket agents.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us.

Firstly, they completely ignored the fact the Maxx Call Centre operated openly lied. Secondly, I find it quite telling that they’re installing ticketing systems at Britomart over the Christmas period. Why are they doing this? Surely this is a waste of time and money, given we’re almost at the point of HOP being used across all providers. It makes me think that HOP is going to be delayed again, if not cancelled completely. This concerns me quite a bit.