Slashdot Mirror
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."
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)
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
This won't work and your government knows that.
I take your points, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. We have a Competition and Consumer Commission, which while not perfect, will be all over the split Telstra, not to mention an increasing number of smaller ISPs and telcos who will scream blue murder if any such thing takes place. A large number of people in the local industry have been chasing this result for years.
It wouldn't be beyond this government to try a sly act like you suggest, but Australia is a different environment.
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.
Perhaps this is because investors presume that Telstra's lessened ability to exploit its monopoly position will result in less profits, due to increased competition. Unless the businesses are much less efficient in providing services as separate entities, those reduced profits will be directly seen as reduced prices. How is it bad for consumers if prices go down due to competition?