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Telecom New Zealand’s decision in 2001 to adopt CDMA technology for its mobile network rather than GSM was, with hindsight, a bad decision. Like the Betamax / VHS story, CDMA may have been the better technology standard but, as most of the world adopted GSM, it became the default standard. For New Zealanders using a CDMA device, calling from overseas is not possible in certain countries (e.g. Australia) and the range of available phones is diminishing and starting to look decidedly dated as  handset manufacturers of are now stoping producing CDMA devices (which don’t use a SIM card). The game is all but over for the technology and Telecom is losing its share of the mobile market to Vodafone and its GSM network.

So Telecom’s response is to roll-out a new bang-up-to-date 4G GSM network, launch a new line-up of compatible devices under the new ‘XT’ brand and to spend big on its promotion. The initiative comes with a price tag of $500M.

Why am I telling you this? Well at the heart of the launch is the overhaul of Telecom’s digital channels and the introduction of  a new online store for the devices –  the bit of the Telecom empire I am responsible for. The launch has been postponed by 2 weeks and is now scheduled for today, the very day I have arranged some weeks ago to collect the keys and move into the house we have bought .

The website will be the first place many people will visit on launch day and we are expecting 10% of the NZ population to visit the site in the first month. As importantly, media commentators will no doubt visit the site on launch and their experience will shape how they report on Telecom’s $500M investment – no pressure…..The changes to the website and online shop have cost about NZ$1.5M (about £600K) and have involved my team of 17 and a further 25 people associated with the 4 suppliers that  we work closely with.

So today I get up at 04.45 to oversee the cut over to the new website which will coincide with the launch press conference. Our offices are on the Karangahape Road which bizarrely is the late night drinking and red light area of Auckland. You take you life into your own hands if you park a car here before 06.00 on a Friday morning. It’s still dark as I drive along the road and several prostitutes try to flag me down. I pull into the car park opposite the Telecom building and, as I pay at the pay and display machine, I am propositioned by a prostitute.  Not quite the start to the day I was expecting.

Safely in the building I meet up with the team and prepare to execute the 37 step plan that we’ve defined  for putting the new website live. The plan is executed flawlessly and the website is live by 07.00 and by 07.02 we had received our first couple of online orders for new XT mobile devices.

However, by 08.00 the online mobile store had started to ‘play-up’. Page load speeds are very slow to the point of being unusable. And then my phone started ringing with all and sundry management within Telecom ringing me to let me know – as if I wasn’t aware already.

By 09.00 the online shop slowness has become the single most significant issue associated with the launch and I’m providing updates to the CEO every 30 mins. Traffic is not being routed to one of the server clusters and the significant traffic that the  launch is driving to the shop is being handled by half the intended available capacity. On a normal day this would be fine, but on launch day this is a problem.

So we knuckle down to investigate the issue with the relevant supplier and by 13.00 its fixed, the online store is behaving as required and I am able to let the CEO know that in the 20 mins since fixing it the shop we have taken 1 order a min (which is quite good for NZ and its small population) – amazingly this snippet of information is quickly whizzing around NZ’s news media websites – which brought a smile to my face after a morning that had been a little pressured!

The website has been universally applauded by Telecom management as a massive step forward for the company (the user experience associated with the previous website had been very poor) and the team and I are pretty pleased with it.

Anyway, as if launching a new website for New Zealand’s largest technology company as part of the biggest brand launch in a decade was not enough for one day I now had to duck out of the office to collect the keys for 8b Rarangi Road our new house. So I quietly slip out and drive the 10km to the estate agent in St Heliers before returning to the office.

At 16.00 the CEO Alan Gourdie hosted drinks to celebrate what had been a spectacularly successful launch (despite website teething troubles). I had a chat with him and we joked that a good launch should always be accompanies by website performance issues to create the impression of unprecedented interest in the product. I left work feeling a mildly euphoric.

As I clocked-off and headed for home, the prostitutes began to reappear on the K-Road no doubt with XT mobile devices in handbags.