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Australia's largest telco to be split
Pie Pants writes "Australia's largest telco company, Telstra, which is also half government-owned and controls most of the telecommunications network in Australia, is to be split into separate retail and wholesale arms. This means that the wholesale side of Telstra will have to sell the network to the retail side under the same terms it uses with other communications companies. The government has done this in a bid to improve communications service in regional Australia, so it can privatize the rest of the telco. This is a welcome move by many after Telstra was accused of taking advantage of its network against competitors."
About time this happened. From looking at other countries with a similar solution, this seems to open the broadband market wide open for end-users (referring to sweden, where my understanding is that things work in a similar way)
9 out of 10 crocodiles approve!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I've seen it happen in my native country, Hungary, when a monopoly telecommunication company was split up this way.
The ISP arm ends up swallowing loss and unfavorable conditions while milking the consumers, and passes the revenue to the telco arm. This makes competition have a very hard time and the government ends up shrugging. Do not have a false sense of success just yet, dear australians. This won't work and your government knows that.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Please also inform the New Zealand Government about this plan. Although in our case the monopolistic Telco would be better split into about one million pieces. Thanks.
Guess what? We've even got ELECTRICITY down here too!
They telco will not be broken up into regional companies and forced to compete with one another. Of course the billions of dollars the government receives from the sale won't be going into my pocket or the pocket of any other Australians who have supported it through taxes all these many years. The money will most likely go into the national surplus where it will stay. This, apparently, has some positive effect on the reduction of interest rates. Which has been shown to be a major contributing factor to get the home owners of Australia to re-elect the current government.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This move toward privatisation is something I'll never understand.
Australia has plenty of 3rd paty telcos at the moment. Not enough to cause the wide-scale state-to-state confusion that apparently pervades the US, but enough to provide choice if you want it.
While the idea of creating a wholesale and retail arm will hopefully provide better service for the 3rd party telcos (Telstra owns most of the broadband backbone here) it still mystifies me as to why the goverment would divest itself of an organisation that actually makes a profit, particularly since in doing so they pretty much guarantee rural services will run into problems as soon as no-one's watching.
The Australian government would do better to keep the wholesale part of the business and sell the retail part. Forcing Telstra to divide itself only internally will lead to a situation where they can sacrafice the retail sales but make a killing on the monopoly wholesale business. Screwing customers for all they can. Once the compay is in private hands there will be little the government can do about it.
Telstra (Internet division: Bigpond) has a reputation here as a cumbersome, inneffectual and generally crappy ISP. The service is shoddy & slow, the tech support takes hours to connect and technicians are worse than monkeys
(one told me that 384Mb ram wasnt enough for cable and that 30 metres of pristine cat5 could lose ~60mbit in throughput, despite the fact that the theoretical limit of my cable was 10mbit)
Anyway, a good british comparison would be BT and an american one could be AOL (maybe comcast)
That's weird.
I thought electrons go the other way around too down there...
I kid, i kid...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Telstra is also Australia's largest company, full stop. This move has reduced the value of the company by some $2 Billion AUD prior to a full sale. Not good for shareholders. Ultimately, not good for customers.
If Telstra is going to be split, that's wonderful news and what I've wanted all along.
It does not look like today's news stories agree with this statement, however.
I thought this sounded like too bid a news story to not have heard about.
Read the article. It doesnt say it will be split, it talks about rumors that a split might have been approved by the *cabinet*, that means the bill probably hasn't even been written yet, even if you assume that the rumour is true.
Thats not to say it wont happen at some time in the future, but at the moment its just speculation, and the title of the story is grossly misleading
There are a lot of Australians on the internet. It's a result of something Aussies used to call the tyranny of distance.
d
The breaking up of Telstra's wholesale and retail arms has been proposed by various groups and individuals for years. Provided the terms & conditions of the contracts allowing access to the wholesale arm are transparent, and that the powers of the ACCC to investigate are improved, this solves the principal problems with the full privatisation of Telstra.
Having said that, it would be preferable for the Govt to retain certain parts of the network infrastructe in regional areas where such provision is unprofitable. That after all is one of the roles of the state - to correct areas where there is a market failure!
The sad thing is that for years the Govt has said this was impossible and couldn't be done. That was complete crap then - and lo and behold now the Coalition has theoretical control of the Senate they can make it happen. At least it appeases the "rebel" Senators.
As for Peter Costello's "you can't be half pregnant" (a statement referring to the half ownership of Telstra by the AU Government) perhaps Disco Pete should use condoms when he decides to screw the country!
It's a pity that the price of this move is the just about definite sell-off of that remaining government stake in Telstra. The sale is going through because the Gov got a majority in the senate at the last election (first time sice the late 70s) so they can push it through now. But this in turn means they have to placate their coalition partners, the Nationals, who only care about Telstra services to the bush being at parity with the city - i.e. heavily subsidised. So we finally get the Telstra split to allay fears of Telstra pricing getting out of control without the Gov holding them back. I would have like the split+maintaining Gov control. Actually there was a plan floated I believe which would sell off some parts - such as the ISP side of things, but keep infrastructure and wholesale under Gov control - the best of both worlds I think.
Of course it's all going now in the final stage of Uncle Howard's Great Fire Sale where all the nation's assets get sold off for short term gain.
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
Why this means good things for us aussies? It means that it also opens the book up for smaller providers to buy services from the wholesale provider, which in previous times has been pretty hopeless with telstra setting inflated prices and restrictive clauses with the installation of equipment and charging of services while maintaining an artificial pricing structure. Telstra retail will have to compete with optus, iinet, internode, etc etc on the same grounds. If wholesale does retail "favours", the ACCC will hone in on this and keep telstra in check.
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
The story is speculation and only time will tell.
The 'Network' used to belong to the people of Australia, maintained by Telstra, now the people of Australia has had their network sold for them and we see nothing. Bah! You either have open playing field or nothing, by inposing conditions on Telstra that are not the same for competitors means that Telstra is stuffed, the government has sided with big business and not with people.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
It's the time. Look at the clock, it's about 5:09 EST right now... in Australia, it's what, 5:09 PM? (At least in one of the timezones) Perfect time for them, and who in the US should be up anyway? Except for me. Damn Alaska time.
I'm just loving www.slashdot.org.au!
/. readers will now try to see if that domain exists?
As I read your post I wonder how many aussie
In fact maybe Telstra will now map their ISP users to it to save on international bandwidth costs!
How can you honestly regulate an entire industry (or technology) when you own the largest "competitor" in that market?
Yes, Australia has discovered electricity. But it goes slower in Queensland, and is positively glacial in Canberra.
Which, coincidentally, is the speed of Telstra Broadband.
We have been calling for this for Donkeys Now, all they need to do is reduce their prices so people will actually use Telstra
Admiral Trigger Happy
Yes, apparently there are other countries on Earth besides the USA and Australia.
It's too bad that you'll probably be too scared to visit those other countries without an army and an colonial occupation first - after which you force everyone to speak American English.
Yes, I'm from Australia and I've been to the USA, and that comment gets me riled. Congratulations. You've earned it.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
With a bit of luck, they'll follow your lead over here. Telecom has improved a lot over the last year or so, perhaps in an attempt to head them off, but the prices here are still over the top.
Telstra and the government have been talking about this for several years, so either 1) It will happen very soon or 2)We will be waiting another decade before this actually happens. The National party (not even the shadow cabinet) is trying to get some Telstra services for those who live in remote regions, but last I heard, they weren't doing very well. As far as I see it, most people (especially those in 'power') don't take them very seriously.
No wonder the share price is doing so poorly, Telstra's service is CRAP!!!! Well, they have good GSM coverage (I use it on Three's Roaming) but its too expensive. Their other services are ok, but they charge way too much. They need to be split, and the government needs to keep the wholesale arm, and sell the retail arm.
Admiral Trigger Happy
I've been advocating this for years, but thought it was too late after the first share offering (T1) back in 1997 (after all, who wants a telco services company when you can own the infrastructure). A handful of us made a quick buck out of it, but those who participated in the second round (T2) weren't so lucky.
Aside from owning the copper (an extremely valuable asset, especially given the relatively low population density in Australia), Telstra provide a range of services - most notably mobiles (MobileNet) and Internet (BigPond, or as I prefer, LittlePuddle) and perhaps the most important of which is ADSL (both wholesale and retail). The issue they are addressing here is leveling the playing field, which would not have been necessary were it not for antics like selling (previously flaky, unreliable) ADSL retail cheaper than wholesale! (One could also speculate that the regular, extended outages were related to sustaining the golden goose (ISDN)).
And then there's the issue of their core competency: phone lines. In March 2000 we were paying $11.65 a month for line rental and something like 25c for untimed local calls. Now your average punter's paying the best part of 30 bucks a month for line rental and a bit less for locals. There's a bunch of capped call plans and other fluff but we're effectively paying a lot more for a service which (thanks to mobiles) we are using a lot less. Plenty of us were using the lines for Internet services and paying for an expensive, unnecessary dialtone.
This is where Australia really could have led the way - were this done properly all carriers (including the hypothetical Telstra retail/services division) would have had access to the copper for the same reasonable price (ideally inside $10/month) and could have offered combined voice/data services, and made a profit, for less than what we're paying now for line rental alone. As a bonus our essential infrastructure would not have ended up strapped to a bloated services company in a volatile market.
Still, it never ceases to amaze me that they've managed to sell us back something we already own, set the industry back a good 5 years while doubling or even tripling the cost of communications for your average Aussie in the process. It's like the Coca Cola company working out we'd pay more for water than we do for Coke itself!
The language used is pretty firm about it. The Australian doesn't generally report rumours, they stick to the facts.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It seems to have worked in the UK however. It isn't ideal, but apparently broadband coverage is 97% of the population. Unbundling lines isn't working great, but the system has been changed recently and should mean higher uptake in the future.
Gas and Electricity are done in the same way over here, with a wholesale network provider, and the service providers all use the same (pipelines|grid) to supply power, with their own billing structure and extras on top.
This method does mean that there is still no competition in the wholesale area, then again I'd prefer that to 2 or 3 times the number of electricity pylons and/or roadworks!
No longer will they be able to attract customers just by hiding their costs in their wholesale arm. They'll actually have to provide decent service and reliability for a change (BigPond has consistently rated bottom of the heap in customer service surveys - which they of course deny).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
UK's population density is somewhat higher than France's (and both are uncomparable to Australia, of course)
/unbundled/ access rather than access at all. FT, for all the blame it deserves, is making good progress towards covering the whole population (in good part thanks to the money alternative unbundled ISPs are helping it make...), which means everyone but the usual unlucky 2%.
The problem in France with rural access is now becoming more a problem of
That's why I recommend Telstra Broadband.
(apologies to whoever I, uhhh, borrowed that from)
Hey heeeey... is it just me, or does anyone else smell a candidate for the next /. meme?
http://www.rlmsystems.com.au/proj_jorn.aspx Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) One of the more interesting Australian telco projects.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Actually, this has nothing to do with improving regional service, or as we put it "service in the bush".
It only has to do with the current Australian Government's policy of selling off all public assets and giving the proceeds to the companies you've sold said assets to.
Yep, you read right. In an effort to convince people that they're going to improve service in the bush, our lovely Aussie government is talking about using the proceeds of the sale to pay Telstra (that's the telco in question) to provide a service to the bush. How's that for a deal!
Anyway, we Australians now have no say in this, Australia is no longer a democracy.
We have a new government, the Liberals (a misnomer - they're the equivalent to the Republicans) who have control of both houses of parliament (which has only happened once before to any party). This is a free pass to do whatever they want for the next three years, short of changing the constitution. Our Governor-General (read: powerless president) was appointed by the current Prime Minister.
Already, after a week with control of our senate, they are giving the opposition the finger. That is why there is news coming out of Australia. These three years will be fun...
Don't mention to this ideological right-wing government that an astute leftie from way back (Kenneth Davidson of The Age) suggested this years ago, of course suggesting that the wholesale arm should remain owned by the government.
Telstra has been abusing its monopoly for years, charging ISPs more for wholesale services than it charges retail. Alas the chance of getting some clear, visionary thought (ie past the next election) from this government is depressingly low.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
"This is a welcome move by many after Telstra was accused of taking advantage of its network against competitors."
Telstra has been accused of taking advantage of its competitors when the first one appeared! Funny how owning and running the infrastructure AND being able to decide on the price to access the infrastructure makes people squeamish.
And may I also add that this plan has been discussed for so many years I look at the news article and still don't believe it. Lets see what Telstra's "Dirty Tricks" department has to combat this one.
We're a self-deprecating society. We take pleasure in making fun of ourselves and putting ourselves down.
;)
Haven't you ever been to Australia? Come down! Come to Melbourne in November/December/Jan, when it's (usually) nice and warm. The other states have nicer weather but we have nicer people
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Australia delights in self deprecation, the same way the US delights in self grandeur.
Get used to it folks - the two Kangaroos I live with got used to it last night.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
Typical of monpolies everywhere, wether goverment owned or private, Telstra is an absolute joke. They provide poor quality products and absolutely shit service at premium prices. All while using their monoply control over infrastructure to try and unfairly squeeze out competitors who actually manage to provide a worthwhile service at a more reasonable price.
They've single handedly held back the IT industry in Australia for years with their incredibly backward and stingy policies towards broadband and data limits.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Indeed. In Canada, the telco had always been a government-regulated monopoly. And you heard all the complains I'm reading now.
Then they deregulated and slowly split up Bell until we arrived at a situation where we have a private, largely deregulated series of companies that exploit their control over the phone network to squish competition, especially in broadband.
They boost local phone rates (another monopoly area) to the point where poor people can't afford phones because they now have to compete with gazillions of long distance carriers and need to get money from somewhere.
Meanwhile, all this competition is slowly causing companies to leave the field or go out of business. Our two biggest cell phone companies have now merged, for example.
It's all leading back toward a monopoly again only this time it'll be totally deregulated and the company will control your landline, your cell, your internet and your TV.
Doesn't that just sound great.
The USA/Canada, Britain/Europe and Australia are each about a third of the way round the world from each other, so Slashdot submissions from each country would spike at different times during the day.
And there's plenty interesting stuff going on in Australia, especially if you think Telstra is eeeevil!
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
By definition, a telco is a telephone or telecommunications company. So a telco company would be a telecommunications company company. Sort of like the PPP protocol or an ATM machine.
Splitting Telstra into infrastructure wholesaling and service retailing companies is what I and many others have been advocating for years. Last year, the government made some progress towards this by ordering Telstra to separate their accounting. This is another step in that direction, however it doesn't go far enough.
This week Telstra announced a $4.5 billion profit, whilst the new yankee CEO had the audacity to demand the government a) chip in $5 billion to fix up the network and b) threaten to reduce spending on the network if they don't reduce regulations on them.
That $5 billion or more needs to urgently be spent to bring the network up to scratch is a slamming indictment on the former CEO, Ziggy Switkowski (who was forced out earlier this year). That man singlehandled pissed billions of Telstra dollars down the drain on stupid overseas ventures and buyouts of media companies. He sacked Telstra technicians and R&D people and reduced spending on network maintenance and upgrading. (One classic result of that being the sealant blunder - they thought they were getting a great deal on a sealant, but because they'd sacked all their R&D people they didn't trial it and later found out the sealant was destroying the lines and ended up spending more than double what they paid for the sealant to fix the problem!) Rather than re-investing the profits into ensuring the future success of the company, they spent it executive bonuses, shareholder dividends and share buybacks to prop up their share price. All the while, small upstart carriers have been slowly chipping away at them.
People like me could see the madness of Ziggy's ways, but the government denied there was a problem or impending crisis and even re-appointed him! (Telstra 'loaning' giant plasma screen TV's to key government ministers probably helped.) Telstra have also consistently played dirty to prevent competitors gaining a foothold in the market. (The best one is "we can't let you into the exchange to install your own equipment because we've lost the keys to it") History has shown that they simply cannot be trusted to maintain the national network - an asset paid for by the Australian tax-payer that is vital to national security.
It is overwhelmingly in the public interest to retain the local loop and back-haul in public ownership as a statutory body. Carriers would then be free to rent space in exchanges for their own equipment, rent local loops and rent back-haul or install their own. Profits from this would then be used to maintain and upgrade the local loop.
But of course, that runs counter to the Liberal's zealous privatisation ideology. I'm from South Australia and I know that privatisation of public utilities has delivered nothing more than decreased reliability and increased prices as companies cut back on maintenance to bump up profits. Public utility infrastructure should be publicly owned because it is for the benefit of all society and remote locations need to be cross-subsidised. It shouldn't make a profit, just enough to cover the cost of maintenance, upgrades and expansion.
Feel lucky to have multiple telcos. South Africa has a single telco that is milking the people they are meant to serve (profits in excess of ~R8b/~$1.5b per year since listing). Essentially, they have been running as a private business with government protection from competition allowing huge profits while shedding jobs by the thousand and reducing access to telecoms services for the majority. Go to www.hellkom.co.za for info. Bitter is not the word.
It's been a long time coming, but finally it looks like Telstra will be split in two very seperate companies.
One to provide Wholesale Telecoms and the other to provide Retail Telecoms services.
This is so horribly over due!
We may be on the verge, finally, of seeing some real competition in the Australian teleco market place.
Telstra naturally are not very happy about what is now an approved [by cabinet] package, which will force them [Telstra] to create seperage network and retail divisions, with separate premises and management but under the same company structure.
If all goes to plan, the government (coalition) could steamroll ahead and sell its majority share holding ( 51.8 per cent stake ) in Telstra before the end of next year. Something which has been high on the governments agenda for some time now.
Sure that's going to make them a truck load of money, it's (the sale of 51.8% of Telstra is a lot of share value) going to do that no matter how you look at it.
What does all this mean for Australia?
Well we could perhaps look just accross the Tasman to the windy city of Wellington, in New Zealand, for an example of just what a completely deregulated teleco marketplace can do if you allow it.
Businesses and individual end users in Wellington, can gain access to Data and Voice services that the rest of the world ( except perhaps for Singapore with their Interent Corridor ) dreams of.
With 10 megabit and 100 megabit, and even gigabit connections for tens or hundreds of dollars a month, zero data usage charges, and peering for one and all if you want it, Wellington has shown that a completely deregulated telecommunications industry can work, and will work, if you allow it to.
We won't in the near future, say the next five years even, see the likes of what NZ has been able to achieve here in Australia, well not from what I can see gazing into my crystal ball anyway, as there's a legacy culture to be left behind before we can see Australia make major leaps forward.
I'm hoping that with Telstra now having to form a legitimate Wholesale arm, freed up and allowed to sell outside of it's previous one and only customer, being Telstra itself ( oh and the occasional carrier and ISP when they had time of course ), Telstra Wholesale may be allowed to sell core services at prices that would allow 3rd party providers, in particular the DSL providers, or the Broadband market at least, provide now ADSL 2+ services of 22 megabit speeds, throughout the country at prices equal to what we now pay for 1.5 megabit links.
What does the general media have to report? Here's a few links for further homework on the topic:
Let's hope that with new management, and a sense of responsibility to the nation, the new Telstra's can both give back a little of what they have so easily come by, and finally deliver on the government's Digital Nation promise.
More to come on the temp home of Dez's Blog at http://mosman.no-ip.com
--- Dez Blanchfield http://WebSearch.COM.AU "Will work for bandwidth.."
Australians should be very concerned about what's going to happen to their phone service. Back in the 80s, we had the Bell Telephone company split up into RBOCs (regional bell operating companies). What used to be the Bell Telephone Service became Ohio Bell where I lived. That eventually became Ameritech and then SBC. Through all of these changes, the quality of service continued to drop. The territorial wars increased between RBOCs and newer upstarts trying to get into the telco biz. Where we used to have a national business with shining R&D output (Thank Bell for Unix and Plan 9), and impecable quality of both product and service, we now have a bunch of useless small companies that refuse to cooperate with each other to server customers properly. We have mildly varying rates (save $1.00 or $2.00 a month by "chosing" your telco) with very few options for alternative services because of the territory wars.
In the house I bought last year, I found a tag on the ground strap for the phone line that was probably put there in the 50s. It harkened back to a day when things were more organized and orderly because there was little room for doing things differently. The tag was essentially a threat that said you MUST NOT remove the ground strap and if it is accidentally cut or loosened, you MUST call the phone company to get it replaced or reattached. Those were the good old days. The problem today is one of "too many chefs". The chefs need to be sent back to R&D where they belong and only the best ideas should be put forward for production. This is why Bell Telephone service was exccelent compared to the mire of crappy phone companies we have now. Not to mention the addition of people who know nothing about phone service providing phone service thanks to VoIP. Deregulation is a bad thing. It destroys carefully controlled systems that MUST be carefully controlled. Just because there is a new or cool idea out there doesn't mean it should make it to production in a short period of time. That's why phone service in the U.S. is so friggin bad. Our entire infrastructure is essentially partially in beta. The only things that do work properly and reliably are the older systems that were put in place before the deregulation.
Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Naw, we just talk a lot. After all, why do you think kangaroos hop everywhere? We've already talked to legs off them :)
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Except the bleak picture you paint doesn't really exist, does it? Bell is forced by the CRTC (Canadian version of the FCC) to share their lines with other ISPs for a regulated price. This has lead to good competition as dozens of smaller ISP offer DSL service at equivalent or even lower prices than Bell. Bell is also required to offer dry loops, even for other ISPs.
So, you can get a dry loop with a DSL ISP of your choice and not subscribe to a single Bell service. That's not a monopoly.
Local phone service couldn't be further from a monopoly. You can get local phone service from Bell. Or you can get local phone service from Videotron, the local cable co. Or you can get local phone service from Vonage. Or any other VOIP provider. And of course there are all the POTS-based local telephone service companies that lease Bell's lines, like DSL ISPs do. Primus, for instance, offers local service for $30/mth.
Man, the picture you paint is a bleak one of monopolies as far as the eye can see, but it just isn't true.
Cellular service is something I'll admit doesn't have as much competition as it could. There is only Rogers and Bell with distinct networks, if I recall correctly. Fido is owned by Rogers, and Telus and Virgin Mobile both use Bell's network. Still, it's not a monopoly, and it's not even an oligopoly. The two camps DO compete, and there are widely divergent price plans even within networks; compare Virgin Mobile's hybrid monthly-but-still-pay-as-you-go service to Bell's monthly service and you'd be hard pressed to figure out they're the same network by looking at their pricing info.
The australian solution is actually interesting. It is like our solution, except it's as if Bell Nexxia had to sell Bell Canada the lines at the same price they sold them to everyone else (imagining that they weren't both owned by the same company). This would totally level the playing field in that every DSL ISP would have the same base pricing. On the other hand, it would mean that the wholesale provider (Bell Nexxia in my example) would still try to charge as much as possible for the wholesale lines because they wouldn't care about how well Bell Canada did anymore.
97% of the population covered means that about 50% of the rural areas are NOT covered. In addition you might want to look at the relative coverage of various offerings. Where do you have 25Mb/s, 8Mb/s, 1Mb/s, 128kb/s (also called "broadband" by France Telecom in small cities) ? And you will notice that the Internet Geography has a direct influence on the economical geography and housing prices.
This is terrible news. Once again the media has been distracted by the issues of services in the bush, when the real issue is quietly forgotten about.
The reality is we're being scammed.
What isn't made clear to the masses, is we have a semi private entity set to get approximately 3 billion dollars of public funds, to expand a soon to be privatised network.
Yes the funds are available to other companies, but if the HiBiS scheme is anything to go by, Tel$tra will get a big slice of it.
We paid for the infrastructure once (with taxes) and now we're expected to pay for it again, while shovelling another 3 billion in to sweeten the deal.
The fact that it's being separated is irrelevant. The opportunity to keep the infrastructure in public hands is a great loss to the people.
The worst part is that the Australian government has the majority share of Tel$tra, but can't even control it. Line rental is going through the roof and Telstra's anti-competitive behaviour against smaller broadband players is killing off the only alternatives we have. That's that state now... What hope do we have once it's fully private.
And what is to happen to all the proceeds from the full sale of Tel$tra? Nothing has been said! Will history repeat itself and deliver the public timely election sweetener deals.
Once again the Australian Government screws the public in favour of big business. Yet it will be all forgotten come election time. Perhaps another "baby overboard" scare or some timely terrorist/security threats will distract the public again. Thanks for nothing Johnny.
Area51 - We are watching...
We're a self-deprecating society. We take pleasure in making fun of ourselves and putting ourselves down.
;)
Haven't you ever been to Australia? Come down! Come to Melbourne in November/December/Jan, when it's (usually) nice and warm. The other states have nicer weather but we have nicer people
And if you do, make sure you're here for the first Tuesday in November - public holiday for a horse race (we DO have some priorities right).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
has been done before, with office buildings that the australian public service occupy. They were previously owned by the government, but we sold to property management business that now rent them back to the government.
/rant off
It is a way of generating lots of revenue for the govt of the day, which makes them look good when comparing budget spending to previous governments.
But the stupid electorate here don't seem to give a shit about that. Only how much they'll get from the 'baby bonus' for sprogging out more wage slaves
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
I don't actually understand what's new about this... speaking as an Australian:
First of all, the plans to privatise Telstra have been around for AGES and this is certainly nothing new.
Secondly and perhaps more notably, I thought that the telco was already split into wholesale/retail. At least, there is currently a wholesale and retail website, which are presumably registered and separate businesses...:
Completely different as far as I can see...