Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds is about to experience his first election campaign in New Zealand.
By now, he is well aware just how topical the company he leads is around Parliament and just how closely everything Telecom does is scrutinised and debated.
Rewind a couple of years and remember the controversial plan to separate Telecom being leaked before it could become the centrepiece of a Michael Cullen budget.
Communications and Information Technology Minister David Cunliffe was left scrambling around to spin the announcement into something positive as shareholders watched the value of their investments in New Zealand's largest listed company plunge.
Fast forward to another election year and broadband is again a hot topic.
The National Party stole a bit of a march on Labour by announcing an ambitious plan for a $1.5 billion taxpayer contribution for fibreoptic cable to take broadband direct to 75% of homes.
Mr Cunliffe later announced Labour's approach would be for incentives for businesses and customers through a $500 million contestable fund over five years - targeted at areas that directly benefit the economy.
Last week, the Telecommunications Summit was held in Auckland and, again, broadband was the issue.
Dr Reynolds got in first by acknowledging there were issues that Telecom could not solve itself when it came to broadband.
"They are issues for the industry, not just for the telcos, but for the policy-makers, regulators, central and local government, educators, communities and the news media, too."
The issues included how to make the most of an open access network that would reach further than in any other country and the provision and content of services and applications that would help New Zealanders to turn on to broadband, and pay for it, he said.
"What is the appropriate mix of public and private funding? And issues like regulatory and policy certainty after two years of deep and far-reaching change.
"Telecom's view is: having come this far, can the industry now have a period of regulatory stability. Please.
"Talking and debating and making policy are one thing. Getting it done - delivering - quite another and we want to get on with it.
"We all have a huge amount of physical and technical work to do and our combined resources are constrained. Let us get on with it."
On all issues, Telecom was ready and willing to contribute its expertise, insights and experience to achieve industry solutions, Dr Reynolds said.
Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (Tuanz) chief executive Ernie Newman told the summit that the fibre future to which both National and Labour had now committed would revolutionise the country's telecommunications.
It would also offset the problem of isolation which had been a barrier to New Zealand being one of the most attractive countries in which to live.
"The two proposals are quite different in detail and both have strengths that can be worked through. But the big development is not the differences.
"It's the cross-party consensus that state investment alongside the private sector in fibre to the premises - the next hugely-enabling step for users - is necessary for economic and social progress."
Fibre would revolutionise the telecommunications' industry and its customers by replacing bandwidth scarcity with bandwidth abundance, Mr Newman said.
No longer would service providers be able to use bandwidth as a means to ration New Zealanders' use of the Internet or to gouge excessive surcharges through data caps.
Bandwidth would become unlimited.
However, that did not mean that everything would suddenly become cheap or free.
In the new era, users would probably spend more money on telecommunications than now but they would get far more social and economic benefit for their outlay, he said.
"A nationwide, ubiquitous fibre to the premises network with mobile telephony as a crucial niche extender and IP everywhere will be an enabler of a whole new world of communications.
"It will materially improve the attractiveness of New Zealand as a place to live in numerous ways."
