President/CEO. Ms Beck replaces Baldo Sutich, who passed away last month.

Mr. Sutich had been due to retire at the end of May on completion of his three-year term. Ms Beck had been selected as his replacement by the Board of Directors in February.

Ms Beck brings continuity to the role of President/CEO, being a current member of the board of directors. She is also a director of EDS New Zealand Limited.

Ms Beck, a successful telecommunications executive, is currently a senior manager within Telecom New Zealand. She has been employed by Telecom since 1996, having previously held positions within the New Zealand Treasury and Deloitte Touche Tomatsu.

"I am very much looking forward to the challenge of being President/CEO of such an exciting company at a time when it is moving from network construction to a more immediate focus on customer service and network management,'' says Ms Beck.

Ms Beck paid tribute to Mr Sutich for his role in guiding the Southern Cross through its network implementation phase and creating a strong financial platform which has recently enabled investments in new technology to increase network capacity by up to 400 percent.

"As a Director of Southern Cross, I witnessed first hand the impressive performance of the company under Mr Sutich's leadership. It is a tribute to him that the company is now in such a strong position, both financially and as a market leader.'' "The company's most recent upgrade plans will enable us to provide for the bandwidth requirements of the region for the next four to five years, and I am looking forward to working with our team to extend Southern Cross' market leadership position,'' Ms Beck said.

Fiona Beck