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."

Comments

Unfortunately that's it

[QuantumG]

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.

Its a poor option

[matt21811]

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.