AU Goverment To Break Up Telstra; Filtering News

benz001 writes "The Minister who has pushed the ridiculous broadband filter plan has at least won a few brownie points with yesterday's press conference, in which he promised to force Telstra to split its network and wholesale businesses. Australia's largest ISP, and the country's main infrastructure owner, will be given a chance to implement the structural separation voluntarily; if it does not, the Government will step in with legislation. Here is the Minister's official press release." And speaking of the filtering program, reader smash writes "After several years of debate and electioneering, some statistics on the Australian national web filtering effort have been disclosed. Apparently, the typical Aussie web surfer is 70 times more likely to win the national lotto than stumble across a blocked page. Additionally, despite the claim that the main aim of the filter is to block child pornography, only 313 of the 977 total sites blocked is on the basis of child porn. At $40M AU so far in taxpayers funds, the cost so far is around $40,900 per blocked URL. Government efficiency at work..."

Comments

It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[Centurix]

Let alone two.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[Zeussy]

From the article it sounds like they are implementing something like what the British government did with BT, that the 2 firms cannot give each other preferential treatment, or special rates. To encourage competetion.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[crafty.munchkin]

... until they get a a $280 bill for going over their transfer limit on their $29.95/month 200mb plan. Note I said transfer limit as Telstra include uploads and downloads in that.

My daughter spent 2 hrs on a kids games website at her grandparents house not long after they signed up to Telstra. This put their account over the limit, and combined with all the other traffic that went across the account in the first month, they received a $280 bill. Despite my repeatedly telling them that they should choose a better ISP (one which only includes downloads in the transfer limit for a start, and one that has a transfer limit that takes more than 10 minutes to chew through for another) I was the one who got yelled at. They were perfectly reasonable with the customer support person... *grumble*

Apparently the sales person told them that 200mb is more than they will ever need in a month for their account. I'd like to find someone in Telstra's sales department and see if they can convince me that they don't need wings to fly as i throw them from the nearest rooftop, by the sounds of things they might actually be able to convince me!

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[IWannaBeAnAC]

No, this is excellent news, should have been done years ago. The problem with Telstra is that, as well as being a front-end retailer and ISP, they own all of the back-end infrastructure. Despite regulations that are supposed to allow access by other providers to the back-end infrastructure, Telstra have always managed to find a way to charge more for other companies to use the infrastructure than it costs themselves, giving Telstra (ISP) an unfair advantage over other ISP's.

Now, the retail end of Telstra (the part that would presumably keep the brand name) will need to compete on a level playing field with the other telcos for a share of the wholesale bandwidth. There is no reason for there to be any kind of special relationship between the separated arms of (former) Telstra, anyway there are plenty of existing laws (eg, price fixing!) to discourage that.

I don't agree that "people don't know better" than use Telstra. That might have been true for the first decade after deregulation, but no longer. Telstra is universally loathed in Australia, and people who still use it tend to only do so because in some markets (but by no means all) they are the cheapest.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[Jeeeb]

Things take time to change. This is a good first step. Alternative ISP have made vast inroads in the Australian market and competition has increased massively.

I first got broadband in 2003 on a 2 year conract, 512/128 1gb download limit (with uploads counted!) and excess charges for $70AUD a month through Telstra.... In 2004, I bought out the contract and switched to iiNet... 256/64kbps 4gb download limit (Uploads not counted) with excess usage capping for $60AUD. Oh how things have changed since then. I'm not living in Australia now, but last year I was on ADSL2+ (Upto 24mbps we usually got about 8-10mbps) with a 30gb download limit and speed capping for $60AUD per month. Despite 5 years of inflation prices have fallen, speeds have risen by 16x+ for many and download limits have risen by a factor of 10 at least and caps rather than excess usage charges are now the norm.

Telstra still holds a significant share of the market, but they're by no means dominant. True structural separation will remove the final barriers that competing ISPs have been complaining about.

On a side note, God I'm sick of Australians complaining about their internet access! Our urban areas aren't particular dense and most of our data comes from and goes to overseas locations requiring expensive to maintain communications satellites and underground cables. Despite that for about $60AUD ($50USD) most people have access to ADSL2+ with a generous download allowance (35gb looking at iiNet, 25 with no peak/off peak split looking at Internode). Furthermore, even if you don't have access to ADSL2+, 1.5mbps ADSL1 or cable is almost definitely available. Not only that but we're looking at massive new infrastructure rollouts in the next few years, which should see the final gaps fixed.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[sonicmerlin]

Hahaha. Your standards are so low it's laughable. "Generous download allowance" of 35 gigabytes? Your attitude is mind-numbingly ignorant.

If most of your data went through underseas cables, then why does your cap apply to all traffic?

You also realize most of the popular sites Australians visit are hosted locally in Australia, right? This reduces costs for the content providers as well as the ISPs.

Japan is a similarly isolated island country, and yet affordable 1 gbps connections are proliferating in urban areas.

Do you fully comprehend that the institution of caps is a gross abuse of the progress of internet technology? Speeds (and routers) increase according to Moore's Law. You should be experiencing internet speed increases on par with hardware speed increases.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[zaydana]

Japan is a similarly isolated island country, and yet affordable 1 gbps connections are proliferating in urban areas.

Population density of Japan: 337.6/km2
Population density of Australia: 2.833/km2

Theres a reason that 1gbps connections are available in Japan, but not Australia. For how isolated we are as a country here, its remarkable that we have the internet as good as we do.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[Anonymous Coward]

Until a windows service pack is released which blows it all in one go.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[sortius_nod]

Indeed, and any suggestion otherwise is merely FUD.

Having worked for Telstra, their attitude toward wholesale customers is absolutely terrible. They are deliberately given worse service than Telstra customers, even though ALL Australians paid for the network they "own". This is great news and I have been pushing for this as a viable alternative to the mess that is Aussie telecoms - mind you, most people have no idea of the real impact and just parrot the FUD spreaders.

I wouldn't be surprised if bloodhawk is in Telstra middle management.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[wvmarle]

Absolutely true.

I have seen something similar going on in The Netherlands, where KPN (traditionally the only fixed-line telephone provider) has been forced to give access to other companies to their network, at good rates. Those rates are determined by the government, periodically reviewed, and are cost plus reasonable profit for the maintenance of the existing network.

It took a while, but first the IDD providers got in - users had to dial a four-digit prefix to select the carrier. Then those IDD providers also started to provide long-distance calls, with the same four-digit prefix. Then small devices came that would dial that prefix for you automatically and transparently. And now even that is not necessary anymore, users can directly set the IDD and long-distance carrier. And are billed by that carrier.

The same of course for ADSL services provided over the POTS network. First KPN's own povider Planet Internet was basically the only one, now there are dozens or even hundreds competing on the ADSL market, providing great choice for the consumer.

The only problem left is that because KPN owns the cables, so it is always a KPN technician that comes to your home to make necessary connections. And the communication between you (consumer that wants a connection), ISP (that has to set up your account) and KPN (that has to connect the cables) is not always going perfectly well.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[Spit]

There are astonishing anti-competitive roadblocks to wholesalers. I recently looked into converting my internet service into a naked service, but the caveats and hoops they have to jump through made me give up for now.

The internet service stays the same, the physical wire stays the same, the exchange connections pretty much stay the same, all that I wanted to change was moving the line rental from Telstra to my ISP. To do so would require a totally new service to be commissioned with extended outages, and was told this is an artificial limitation.

Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra

[Hucko]

Indeed, and any suggestion otherwise is merely FUD. Having worked for Telstra, their attitude toward customers is absolutely terrible. They are deliberately given worse service than corporate CIOs, even though ALL Australians paid for the network they "own". This is great news and I have been pushing for this as a viable alternative to the mess that is Aussie telecoms - mind you, most people have no idea of the real impact and just parrot the FUD spreaders. I wouldn't be surprised if bloodhawk is in Telstra middle management.

There I fixed... yada, yada. *sob*

You don't want to push the efficiency angle...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Implementation of a system like that unavoidably involves substantial fixed costs(both at startup and per year). Once you have one, though, incremental costs should be pretty low. Thus, the obvious way of making it "more efficient" in dollars/URL terms is to use it a lot more.

Obviously, the mere existence of the system sucks, and taking pot-shots at governmental inefficiency is always fun; but there is a serious point here(although this program is a poor example, since it shouldn't exist at all):

Inefficiency is bad; but do not make the mistake of assuming that procedural restraint is a form of inefficiency. After all, courtrooms could be much more efficient, in case/year terms, if jury trials and defense attorneys were abolished. Prisons would be much more efficient, in dollars/year/inmate terms, if they were kept as full and as crowded as possible. And just think of the negative impact of the internal affairs division on the number of officers actively patrolling the streets, a terrible waste.

If your justice system allows efficiency to replace justice as the primary criterion, you have issues.(Of course, if your justice system allows public hysteria and political convenience to replace justice as the primary criteria, you get web censorship schemes).

Re:You don't want to push the efficiency angle...

[Si1verfish]

The interesting point I heard yesterday on the radio was that if you are spending huge sums of money creating a new independent network to compete with telstra, why spend all this money reforming the old network at the same time?

Corruption and Australia

[ztransform]

As an Australian citizen I have to say I am ashamed of Australia's level of corruption at all levels of government (and the lower the level the higher the corruption) from local to state to federal. With a justice system for which truth is no defence against an allegation and unions that have no interest in actually doing their job.

Is Internet Filtering about protecting Australians or giving authorities more reason to prosecute and more agencies kickbacks for "essential services"?

Here in Australia you don't even need to break a present law to have committed a crime. The Australian Tax Office (or Federal Government) can, at any time, pass legislation that applies retrospectively. For anyone with a short memory consider the repealed alcopop tax in 2009, the luxury car tax that was levied prematurely, the petrol taxes levied by Keating without budget approval in the senate, etc etc.

People get excited about Australia but it is just the weather and landscapes that are worth raving about. The regulatory system has nothing fair or just about it.

Re:Corruption and Australia

[ztransform]

The bigger concern is that they can introduce such things without any legislation passing and have it effectively stick over multiple years

My concern is that they tax individuals, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, on each drink. Then when they decide the tax is illegal guess who they refund.. the person that paid the tax? NO! They refund the alcohol industry.

Makes me think the alcohol industry might be strong arming the government into making up the tax so they can sell these drinks at a higher price which everyone grumbles about and accepts and then profits from!

Which goes to prove Australia is anything but "just". The concept of a "fair go" is nowhere to be found. If Australia stood behind the "fair go" they would hunt down every individual that bought an alcopop and refund them that $1 or so.

Or better yet they'd just not collect un-ratified taxes while threatening businesses with fines and retrospective taxes if/when legislation actually gets passed.

Re:Corruption and Australia

[LordAndrewSama]

As an Australian citizen I have to say I am ashamed of Australia's level of corruption

And so you should be. We brits have been doing corrupt fucked up government for ages, and you're very far behind, despite all the hard work that seems to be going into catching up. do you have people like mandelson, jacqui smith, gordon brown? shape up and get with it, we're all moving into a golden age of corruption, and you don't want to be left behind, do you?

Re:Corruption and Australia

[mrrudge]

I didn't realise it had to be on the same scale as the-most-corrupt to qualify as corruption ? Nepotism and chronyism are corruption of the highest order when done at a government level, the people get less than they deserve through personal greed. Retroactive laws which benefit the government as an institution over the people they are sworn to defend and uphold is corruption.

And vote for who exactly in this two horses of slightly different colour race ? Tory ? Lib Dem ? Green ? Pirate ? Honestly, you believe a change of management to something incredibly similar will change things ?

I'm sorry, I've lived through this sceptred isle being 'managed' by both major parties. I'll consider, research and vote as always, but I expect only a different colour tie on the man at the top.

Re:Wow

[MichaelSmith]

From what I've heard, ever since Telstra went private in 2006, they've been nothing but a nightmare for Australians

Nothing changed in 2006. Telstra/Telecom has always regarded their customers as the enemy. Back when Optus was starting up I preselected them for long distance. I called Telstra customer support with a question about my Telstra account for local calls. Their answer was that they couldn't answer the question because I has preselected Optus. In other words: you deal with the competition so STFU.

Old telstra people I know regard their employer as part of the federal government. By that argument dealing with the competition is just like dealing with another government.

The truth...

[overbaud]

...is that if Telstra had played ball with Kevin Krudd and implemented his national broadband plan this would not be happening. But Telstra doesn't want to play ball and that makes Kevins plans next to impossible. This is just Kevin getting his own back and forcing Telstra to play ball at the cost of the thousands of Mum and Dad investors that were encouraged to invest in Telstra. A double financial kick in the guts given the current financial climate. If Kevin really wanted to bring about this change *he should have done it before now* ... not right after Telstra flipped him and his badly thought out national broadband network the middle finger. Kevin is still the snot nosed debate team nerd he was in highschool, he's just more powerful and narcissistic now.

Re:The truth...

[EEPROMS]

thousands of Mum and Dad investors

You have to be kidding me, every Telstra investor is now crying in their drink after losing 70% true net worth on their investment (net worth versus cash). They would have been better opening a cash account and getting 4.5%pa.

Re:The truth...

[rtb61]

When Telstra was privatised it was quite clearly stated in the prospectus that the government could implement changes in the way telstra was managed if those changes were in the public interest, this obviously has always had an impact on Telstra's share value and as an investor you should have kept informed.

On the subject of privatisation, prior to privatisation Telstra as a government institution had originally intended to have fibre optic to the majority of Australian homes by 2005, so the profits for a few yet once again destroyed the benefits for the many. Privatisation the scourge of efficient well served public 'services', how to turn something good into something reviled requiring constant government supervision, auditing, legislation and prosecution.

When you want to fix a system that is irretrievably broken, you break up the private parts, nationalise it and turn it into a public service, when you want to do the opposite, privatise, a few get rich and the rest get screwed plus a whole load of PR=B$ advertising.

Re:The truth...

[dbIII]

The truth is instead that if Telstra didn't have a government mandated monopoly then Sol or Ziggy would have completely destroyed it due to their mismanagement. The price of a government mandated monopoly and having a government as the largest shareholder (future fund) is that the government can take that away.
Telstra have not been "playing ball" since about 1996! I also don't see how you can blame the Prime Minister for the money grubbing scam of the previous government of the Telstra float. A company that spends millions buying a dodgy pirate ringtone company in China and a thousand other bits of stupidity should not be immune to government action when it is in the national interest and the government is the major shareholder. The government has to get more out of it than a place to put good mates on the board, which is nearly all the previous government did. It needs better management than letting a failed farmer pick a silver tongued mexican bandit as a CEO then get that seconded by a historian too radical to get a good job in academia and a corrupt businessman that bought his way onto Australias TV screens as a pathetic copy of Letterman.
Kevin Rudd's huge ego really has nothing to do with it. We are all paying life support for a disfunctional corporation that could not exist in a competitive environment. We effectively have a government Qango that the government can not control and expending far more money while delivering far lass than it would if it was run by the government or was run like a private corporation. Sol must have been laughing all the way to the bank as he came over, called his friends over to join the feeding frenzy and contracted out many failed projects at vast expense with nothing delivered to friends at Andersons/Accenture and others.

Re:The truth

[mjwx]

The sad truth is that Telstra has needed it's sales arm broken off from its service arm for a long time now. They have had too much influence over the operations of other telco's for a very long time and have repeatedly used it's dominant market position to force customers into higher paying plans. DSL blackspots to sell high priced "NextG" mobile broadband, limiting the bandwidth/coverage of MVNO's, deliberately reserving open DSLAM ports for Telstra only customers when no such customers existed (Against the law, which stipulated they could not do that to wholesale customers) claiming there were no ports available (except if you went with Big Pond). There is a reason iinet, Internode and many other smaller ISP's went to great pain and expense to install their own DSL infrastructure and now Telstra is whinging that it cant compete.

at the cost of the thousands of Mum and Dad investors that were encouraged to invest in Telstra.

At the age of 15 I could tell the Telstra Share Offers were vastly overpriced, this is why they only sent their prospectus to selected individuals in the first release. Telstra has held back the advance of internet and telecommunications services in this country and why should we help them hold it back even further for the sake of other peoples bad investment.

So you would prefer they blocked more sites?

[nedlohs]

To decrease the stupid cost per blocked url metric?

Re:So you would prefer they blocked more sites?

[Ralish]

No, I take the view that's $40 million AUD that could have been spent on actually bringing the creators of genuine child pornography to justice, rather than a filter to stop people from viewing the end result of the real original sin. The hard reality is, people who want to view this material are always going to be able to access it if they really want to, filter or no filter, and this money does nothing to stop the problem at the source; just maybe a few people from seeing a video that shows the (in my opinion) far greater crime.

.

Maybe we could fix the regulations instead?

[urbanheretic]

Seriously, the filter proposal is simply lipstick on a pig... The real problem for Australia is the lack of a clear regulatory system. As a gamer, the fact that we don't have an R18+ classification really irritates me, the internet classification system just depends on what the ACMA feels like on that day, as they don't have to get a site a classification, just declare what they believe the classification board would approve. It might help if we got a politician who understood technology, instead of the current streak of 'wonderful' caretakers

Re:Maybe we could fix the regulations instead?

[Techman83]

Funnily enough, Part of Senator Conroy's election strategy was explaining exactly how much of a luddite Hellen Coonan was. I attended one of his broadband forums prior to the last election, and whilst I pulled him up on a few things, he actually had a plan to do something about communications in Australia. Unfortunately it turns out that he was no better and in fact a magnitude worse then Helen Coonan.

Re:Wow

[SlashWombat]

I used to work for Telstra about 15 years ago and it was thought by most employees at that time that the initial Telstra "split up" was laughable, and was not going to do anything for competition. After all this time, it seems laughable that they are only just considering some bum kicking. This will all become mute should the government implement the national broadband they seem intent on at present as this will spell the death knell for the copper voice/ADSL that most Aussies currently connect via. As it stands, so many let their home phone go, and use their mobiles for everything. (Except for ADSL ... and you dont need the voice once connected!)

Re:Statistics?

[absoluteflatness]

To think that I was a native of a country (UK) being harassed by immigrants (Africans) about harassing immigrants (Aboriginals)!

In what way are Aboriginal people immigrants?

About time

[dcam]

Good on govt. for doing what should have been done before telstra was sold. This actually ensures that there will be some competition, rather than a continual requirement for regulation. In its current form, telstra is a recipe for anti-competitive strategies. With a monopoly on copper, they have a retail arm and a wholesale arm, that sells to companies who compete with the retail arm.

Sol and his amigos didn't exactly help telstra either. In Australia the government is not afraid of regulating with the consumer in mind.

I disagree

[Namarrgon]

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.

Re:NBN on the cheap?

[mgblst]

What the hell are you talking about. If you have never heard anyone in gov talk about splitting up telstra before, you have been living under a rock. This is the best thing that could have happened, and should have happened from the beginning.

Buying it Back

[missileman]

I believe the current government is maneuvering to buy back the wholesale arm of Telstra. It should be in public hands IMO, and it sure would make the NBN (National Broadband Network) a lot more viable. ... and I don't think it's the wrong thing to do.

Re:Buying it Back

[sincewhen]

Agreed. The problem I had with the pseudo-privatisation of Telstra was that the infrastructure had been paid for by our taxes, but was being sold off with the company, giving Telstra a huge advantage in the marketplace. To me, the organisation should have been split into three independent units - (1) Mobile phone/data, (2) landline, internet and other services and (3) infrastructure. The last would become a govt authority which would take a cut from all the phone companies for using the infrastructure and in return build more/improved infrastructure by tendering out jobs. That way the infrastructure costs would not have been borne by the telcos, allowing them to come into the market cheaply and improve competition. The other parts of Telstra could then have been sold off to operate as private companies with no market advantage apart from their incumbency. This would have allowed them to operate in the marketplace without having the govt as a major shareholder and being forced to guarantee services including unprofitable ones.
But it's too late now.

Re:Statistics?

[Dan541]

These stats came from a government that would not set the criteria of pass or fail until they have the result. They also make stupid claims about how it won't slow the internet, last I checked a 404 is a pretty high percentage of slow down about 100%

Re:Statistics?

[Hucko]

I was recently told by a Queensland Education Department tech that the current, recently upgraded EdQ filter infrastructure (centralised in Brisbane covers every school in Qld Au) is only able to cope with a maximum 80mbps requests. Some of the apparently common slowdowns of the department's network were due to this.

I can only wonder what will happen when Australians are all filtered...

Re:Statistics?

[sodul]

Off topic but the irony and the laugh would be on you if they "harassed" you the same the British did: by harassment do you mean they forced you out of your homes, to learn their imported language, killed your friends and kidnaped your kids ?