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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."
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 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!
Privitization is just a money grab for the friends of politicians. You can bet they already know who will own the thing.
If a government agency is doing a poor job, try doing what you would do in a private agency, fire somebody. Instead they 'fire' the whole agency.
Municipal broadband seems to be terribly great in USA. So much so that the private companies are paying their last dollar to get laws to forbid it. The idea that government run agencies are poor is an old tired excuse that really shouldn't work on the people anymore.
This does not mean I support what is going on in Russia either...