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Australian Telstra Monopoly Dead
philmarcracken writes "The Senate recently passed a bill through the Lower House for the separation of Telstra's retail and wholesale arms and now that same bill has just scraped by in the Upper House; 30 to 28. The deal is worth $11 billion AUD for Telstra and is welcomed by them despite Coalition opposition. This paves the way for the governmental body NBNco to use Telstra's existing assets and expedite laying fibre optic cables to the larger population densities."
If a monopoly is happy to go along with a government decision to break it up, you can bet that there's some massive upside for the company. That doesn't necessarily mean better anything for the customer.
Not a moment too soon! Telstra should have been split up when it was privatised. Their constant anti-competitive antics have held Australian telecoms back ever since.
The Australian Senate is the house of review - the upper house. It is the House of Representatives that is the lower house, and that introduces legislation. The legislation passed the House of Representatives; it passed with amendments in the Senate; and now the House of Representatives needs to vote on those amendments (it looks likely that they will pass). Only once all of this is done will the legislation be done and dusted.
In one sense, this could end up being a case of "out of the frying pan, into the fire", since the NBN will be a telecommunications wholesale monopoly provider - nobody's going to be in a position to compete against them on anything more than a very small scale, and in this game, if you're talking small scale, you're talking high costs. That's not necessarily an issue, though, since telecommunications is a natural monopoly. With the appropriate checks on NBNco's hold on telecommunications, it will be a net positive - certainly compared to Telstra (which had the infrastructure monopoly, plus a retail arm that took full advantage of that power - witness all the wrangling that ensued every few years when Bigpond dropped their prices to below what other ISPs could manage on reselling Telstra's wholesale service) it will be a huge win for Australia.
Hopefully the proposed privatisation of NBNco won't go ahead; I see too much value to Australia in keeping it as a government-owned corporation compared with selling it off a few years after the rollout is complete.
Telstra was a government monopoly until about 20 years ago when oz gov let in competition and eventually sold off 51% of Telstra on the sharemarket
This deal splits the retail and wholesale arms of Telstra - the wholesale (infrastructure) arm will now more or less be run by the nbn (national broadband network) - which is a government run monopoly
So effectively we now have a new monopoly on infrastructure that is owned by the government and can only sell wholesale - not to the public.
However - I reckon this is a great thing for a whole bunch of reasons. Just don't be fooled into thinking this is not a new monopoly
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/billions-to-be-spent-on-dubious-benefits/story-e6frg6zo-1225961705602
Not only that, but it benefits for city folk are heavily debated, while the country folk will reap much of the rewards. I don't have a problem with country folk, but I do have a problem with us subsidizing their life choices by living remote from services offered in heavily populated cities. Hell, I'd love to move out to the countryside, and have all the services offered in a city location.
I lived in Sydney for 35 years before recently moving to London for contract work, and the last 6 years of that I had a 20 MB pipe, without the need for Telstra - the peddlers of an over the top expensive product.
The govt all the long wanted Telstra to stump up for NBN and when the pollies rubbished their proposal, it seemed like the smaller operators had a chance to collectively provide services at an equal rate.
Anyway guys, the NBN may come to your door, but in order to use it you'll have to shell out up to $450 and $750, and up to $3,000 to get a connection. Good luck with that.
These public-private consortiums are ruining our country, hiding our debt and placing the burden on the citizens to stump up extra for services that should spearheaded by govt - if they deem them so important.
The general thought was that it was impossible to have natural competition in the infrastructure space, so the government may as well take care of that. Including all the "last miles". All businesses can do their ISP thing on the public fibre.
*Sometimes* socialism isn't just not bad. It's the dammed solution.
The fact that this was not done years ago (heavy Kevvy was talking about it since he was elected) was the fact that Telstra fought it tooth and nail. But it's done now and there is nothing more Telstra can do about it.
Realistically this is something the Howard government should have done when Telstra was privatised in the 90's.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Telstra is not really a monopoly any more, they are a large telco but due to effective regulation cant force the market into following them despite owning most of the copper in OZ.
Telstra's wholesale arm no longer has any impetus to protect Telstra's retail arm. This will be good for the consumer as Telstra can no longer engage in (as much) anti competitive activities.
This is something that should have been done with the privatisation of Telecom Australia back in the 90's (Public utility Telecom Australia was sold off and became the private company Telstra)
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
While the Telstra monopoly on last mile infrastructure may be "dead", this paves the way for a monopoly that doesn't only include last mile, but backhaul access as well. This is potentially far worse than any monopoly under Telstra because the government is having to make radical changes to competition law to ensure that there is no competition to the NBN.
The only way the government can justify the NBN is to change laws to prevent competition in last mile and backhaul delivery.
While as a government owned utility this sounds ok, the broader problem is that the government has planned for portions of the NBN to be sold off to the private sector.
This is of great concern.
No more ridiculous $70/month for 20gb or whatever the average is. The most you can get as a consumer is 500gb for something like $250/month, ridiculous.
Of course there is a limit both on capacity and overselling, but that was artificially increased through the monopoly. Now we should start getting fairer prices, and catching up with the rest of the world.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Just so everyone on /. understands, The Australian is the equivalent of Fox News when it comes to the current government. Nothing in that paper can be considered accurate about the NBN.
The average broadband speed in AU is 1.6 Mbit/s. It's terrible. If you want a guaranteed 10 Mbit/s pipe you are looking at A$1400 per month. I live a bit over 3 KM from my exchange and get a sync speed on my DSL of 4 Mbit/s. More people in AU have a slower sync speed than a higher sync speed in this country.
Also when you do these rants, differentiate between MB (megabytes) and Mb or Mbit (megabit) and specify that it is per second (Mbit/s).
Hasn't been the case in Tassie, outright lies good sir. NBNco will connect to one point inside your house the same as if it were a Telstra telephone connection.
If you don't have an active (copper) telephone line to your house at the moment, Telstra charge $400 for connection. This is just to get it made active at the exchange, then you need to pay any fees your service provider asks. You don't want to know the costs if you don't already have copper to your door.
Now Wireless, there's a plan that needs to be replaced every few years. HSPA networks that were installed 5 years ago are already at the end of their life, Telstra and Optus are testing LTE and WiMax is already deployed by Vivid Wireless. Wireless may only be 6 Billion now, but it's another 6 billion every 5 years not to mention that it will never match the speed and latency of multi mode fibre. Fibre has a lifespan of at least 40 years, the expected lifespan on fibre is 60 years if it's been flexed so independent MP Tony Windsor put it best when he said "You do it once, you do it right, you do it fibre".
Uninformed Luddites are ruining our country good sir. For the last 50 years we've been technological leaders with things like CSIRO and world class universities, why do you want to throw this away. Really, if you want to save some serious taxpayer $$$ dump the baby bonus scheme.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
i'm with TPG and i have unlimited internet, no caps for $75/mo :p
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
Bullshit! Ahem, http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/easy_broadband/ 1TB per month for AU$130 a month, less if you bundle I'm currently paying $60 a month for 60GB naked ADSL2, land line on VoIP, so no monthly rental fee to Telstra for a service I don't use. The industry in .au is changing, slowly, but it is changing ... and the NBN is one of the catalysts
iinet offer a 1 terabyte plan for 99 dollars a month, although I will concede that it's 500gb peak and 500gb offpeak.
I understand why ISP's offer offpeak quota, that doesn't mean it doesn't annoy the piss out of me.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
I have an unmetered and unshaped 10mbit/10mbit for 10e/mo. :P
That deal is upload and download, so still only 500gb download. worse it is split up between peak and offpeak.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
plus its divided between up and down....so 250gb down peak + 250gb down offpeak.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
500GB download assuming you upload as much as you download...
Furthermore, there is no on or off peak on that internode plan. It's a flat terabyte, anytime.
Add to that the fact that your upload speed will usually be 1/10th or less than your download speed and it doesn't seem too bad unless you're a super heavy user. I manage to burn my way through most or all of 200GB a month pretty easily.
Ezekiel 23:20
Why on earth would you assume you upload as much as you download? There are plenty of Americans on unlimited plans to handle seeding, thankyouverymuch.
The NBN Co. spent $10b(?) dollars of Australias money to buy Telstra's current perfectly functional underground and cable/telephone network. They will own both the national fibre and copper networks, and in a few years they will rip up the copper network.
... The first mass outage is going to cause a lot of pain.
It's a needless loss of a proven piece of infrastructure, instead the fibre should go out to places that aren't adequately serviced by copper; the fibre should coexist with the copper network. Once all of the rural/under-connected areas are connected, only then should duplication of the copper network begin
I'm concerned that Australia is being mugged by Labor. I can't decide if Labor is doing it out of incompetence, malice, or for the gain of some private group.
Whatever I thought of Malcolm Turnbull before (the opposition communications minister), he has proven himself to be the only politician competent on the issue, and I hope he succeeds in stopping Labor.
They're stringing the fibre on telegraph poles (bushfires, storms)
The Senate doesn't pass bills through the lower house; the Senate is the upper house. Perhaps you meant "The Government recently passed a bill through the Lower House..."
And what are these "larger population densities"? Do you mean "larger cities"? Probably better just to say that then.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Important point: It's not an infrastructure loss, it's an infrastructure upgrade, and no copper will be ripped up until all the fibre is in place.
Leaving in the copper for duplication was certainly considered, but the significant advantages caused by a relatively fast national switchover to high-speed fibre won the day (100% uptake = lower prices for all + much wider market for high-speed data services like IPTV, electronic health record transmission, next-gen internet applications etc).
Turnbull does have a few clues about this (that's why he has shares in Melbourne IT; he can see where this is going), and I don't think for a minute that he personally believes Abbott's plan of a little wireless bandaid around the edges is anything more than a stopgap response (it's hardly futureproof in any sense). However, since Abbott booted him from the top spot (shame that) he doesn't have much say in the matter anymore, and now has to toe the party line and just do his assigned job of "demolishing" the Government wherever he can.
Oh, and fibre on the poles? It's going alongside the copper, through Telstra's conduits, ducts, poles; wherever the copper goes - that was one of the main points of the deal with Telstra after all.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Can you point to actual statements from the government stating that they will prohibit other networks from competing with the NBN?
I havent seen such statements.
What I HAVE seen is proposals to require 3rd party network builders to provide wholesale access to their network on an open basis and to support the technical specs of the NBN (the intent of this is to ensure companies cant do deals with land developers (and others) to build networks independent of the NBN and gain a monopoly over the area the network is being built in (as is the case now with a number of providers in various estates and apartment complexes)
[blockquote]The deal is worth $11 billion AUD for Telstra[/blockquote]For what was Telstra privatised - with ownership - over infrastructure?
The deal pays them for soon-to-be-redundant infrastructure.
Anyone paying $70 per month and only getting 20gb is paying far too much.
Even if all you can get is Telstra Wholesale ADSL, TPG will sell you unlimited at 8Mbps or 300GB at ADSL2+ speeds for your $70
Other ISPs like Internode have similar plans.
It clearly states on the internode site that the terabyte is split between peak and offpeak. It also states that it is a combined effort, so no, 500gb download MAX, half of which must be during offpeak.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
In the UK although BT (formerly British Telecom) wasn't broken up as a company, the retail and wholesale arms were 'forced' to become independent of each other. In practice this means that there is huge collusion between them to screw over both customers and other phone companies/ISPs.
Pricing structures are totally fixed to make it difficult for resellers. If you try and pay a third party provider for BT internet, they will make sure that you have technical problems, and drag their feet about dealing with them. Their retailer arm exploits the fact that most of their customers do not understand that they can get phone and internet from other companies over their existing line, by overcharging them wildly, but charging you much less if you happen to make an effort to shop around all their deals and packages. They pull stunts such as charging £150 to 'reactivate' a phone line, meaning that if you close your home phone account (with any provider) one day and someone else (maybe a new tenant in a rented premises) tries to get a phone connection at the same address using the same line the next day, they have to pay BT Openreach for the 'engineering work' they are supposedly doing to get the line switched back on.
The regulators OFCOM literally do not give a monkey's about this or any other corrupt and monopolistic practices BT use. They see it as more trouble than it's worth/politically awkward to make BT stick to its legal obligations. Obligations which were conditions of BT taking over a system owned by and paid for by the British public.
It is not split between peak and offpeak. See the part where it says "Monthly 'Anytime' Quota"? That's what the "Anytime" part means. Go read the T&C's if you don't believe me, there is no mention of peak/offpeak. If you insist otherwise please describe exactly where it "clearly" states this fact.
I assume by "combined effort" (I can't see that phrase anywhere on their website) you're referring to uploads+downloads being counted. The previous poster is correct; most users do not upload as much as they download, with the exception of torrenters. The small amount of ACKs sent in reply to packets received in the course of regular web activity does not result in a 1:1 upload:download ratio. You can definitely download a lot more than 500GB.
Where does it clearly state that it is split between peak and off peak? The contracts don't even mention the quotas, so the only information is on the plan pages.
On http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/easy_naked/plans/ I see the following text:
"Massive 'Any Time' monthly quota - measured as the total of downloads plus uploads. No 'peak' or 'off-peak' restrictions - you can use the Internet whenever you like!"
That definitely sounds like there is no peak vs off-peak differentiation.
I also see: "The monthly quota allocation on Internode Easy Naked services is counted as the sum of both uploads and downloads".
That statement certainly looks like it is saying that there is only one combined quota, not separate upload and download quotas. If there were separate upload and download quotas, then that statement would qualify as deliberately misleading advertising. I'm not an Australian, but I would presume there are laws against misleading advertisements in Australia.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Although I disagree with what Mr Coward has stated, it's important to state never the less.
Yes, the whole Telstra separation could go pear-shaped but I doubt it, BT was privatised under Thatcher, Gillard is far from Thatcher level of, shall we say extreme capitalist philosophies. But we should be aware of potential issues and work to prevent them. The separation is to ensure that Telstra retail and Telstra wholesale become different companies in entirety. * Julia Gillard is the current Australian Prime Minister which has a minority government (I.E. dependent on minor parties for power). She is leader of the Labor party.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Not likely, sorry. Prices are set by transit costs. Where only Telstra can offer transit, you only get the low quota plans available, but even where competition exists you face the basic fact that international transit is very expensive. We are a long way from everywhere, and those submarine cables are expensive to lay and operate.
I often wonder whether $43bn would have bought us a government owned cable to bring competition to international transit.
250gb down peak + 250gb down offpeak.
No No No No No. I think you need to learn a bit more about how teh internets works.
Government spin hid that from the public.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
A monopoly by any other name is still a monopoly.
Having said that, there's a lot of good in theory in what The NBN might possibly do, if it is done well and properly.
Having said that, there's a lot of evil that may come about as a reuslt of the NBN, if it's done poorly.
The Devil is in the details.
Details which we do not yet have.
Details which are being defined and/or controlled by Them Politicians. (duh bahstids)
Not that I'm implying that The Will Screw This Up (if there's any way that is possible).
But Based On Previous Performance, Confidence of a Complete Charlie Foxtrot is HIGH.
Seriously Folks - Prove Me Wrong - I DOUBLE DARES YA - Get It Right (for once).
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The thing that made Telstra the nightmare it is would be that it was a beast with government roots that was told to go out and make as much money as it could. That meant gouging customers at home as much as possible to pay for failed financial adventures in China, a Rock Star style CEO that came to do nothing but plunder and cutting services to far more than anyone in a competitive situation could possibly get away with.
The NBN has one role and is not likely to attempt to become the diseased octopus that Telstra is. They will not be spending millions buying a Chinese company that sells pirated mp3s as ringtones or other similar bits of stupidity. Would you buy a pirated mp3 instead of getting the torrent and waiting ten minutes to get it for free?
However if it's run like the insane way we have pretend deregulation and pretend privitisation of electricity (copied from California's fucking disaster of a system in the 1990s) then it could be a new nightmare.
prices are transit costs + whatever Telstra feels like adding on because they can get away with it.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
While meanwhile in Australia my company pays more than $600 per month for 2Mbs/2Mbs because we need faster speeds going out than we can get for the $75.
That's right, we're paying the equivalent of 440e for one fifth the speed the AC above is getting for 10e.
How's that for a case for change?
Most of that copper is old stuff with lead and paper protecting it and only has a few years left. That's right, most of it was from before plastic insulation. Telstra have done very little apart from quick fixes to the copper network since 1996 and they had cut back quite a bit even before then. A lot of that copper needs to be replaced immediately and pretty well all of it within a ten year time span, and the stuff is expensive. Replacing the lot with fibre apparently works out to be cheaper within a decade than fixing copper with copper.
Turnbull is the guy that killed HIH, bought his way into a safe seat and manufactured a scandal from nothing leaving a sick public servant to carry the blame. The only thing he actually did in government was a blanket ban on light bulbs - even those oven lights where there is no alternative light source that will work. He sounds impressive and is wonderful at "spin" but should never be allowed anywhere near public money. He is not acting in your interest, the countries interest or even in the interest of his party. If he brings up something useful then good for him, but it needs to be checked against a reliable source to see if it is another completely fabricated scandal.
Surely you guys read most of the slashdot articles? By 2040 at current rate of the expansion of internet services 50% of all the world's electricity will be devoted to the internet. The solution to this is optical routers which are < 10 years off.
What is costing the cash here is the laying of optical cable with a lifespan of over 100 years. Leaving the copper cable in the ground just isn't an option as it has a lifespan too.
The NBN is buying Telstra's old network to turn it off, mostly. The business case for NBN achieves a 70+% return WITHOUT factoring in the added benefits from high speed internet. Without considering that the move to optical routers is an essential to the future of the internet.
What we know for sure it that this is worth it. It removers the copper network and the microwave links. What would you rather manage, a networks of fiber, fiber/copper, copper and microwaves or a unified fiber network?