Australian Telstra Monopoly Dead 100
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."
Re:If Telstra is for it, you can bet it's no good (Score:5, Informative)
They've got no choice. They fought it as long and hard as they could. The only options for them now are the easy way or the hard way - and they're welcoming the easy way.
But, of course, the government wants to make it as favourable as possible for them as they're still major shareholders.
A correction, if I may. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:NBN waste of money (Score:5, Informative)
What "choice"? I live in the Australian countryside. I'd love to live in Sydney, but my house is worth about $350,000 dollars, whereas the smallest apartment in Sydney is well out of our league at more than double that, and it wouldn't be big enough to house my family.
I run my own software business from home, and this is possible because I have some form of broadband connection. It's not great - just ADSL (1) and we're so far from the exchange that the speed is well down on the maximum theoretical available. We also have no choice but to use Telstra here, there is no alternative service for this region.
By living here we suffer in terms of not having lots of services available on our doorstep - if it's not agricultural, you can't get it here. So anything "unusual" requires a trip to Sydney or Brisbane which is a 7 hour drive either way, one way. Even basic stuff like home furnishing can be a challenge.
Yes, it's nice to live here, it has many upsides, but it certainly is not convenient compared to living in the city. Roll on the NBN, it will give us many of the benefits that city folk take for granted, and will allow me personally to expand my software enterprise as well as reduce our environmental impact by eliminating many car journeys that are currently forced on us.
Re:A correction, if I may. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:NBN waste of money (Score:2, Informative)
He reads the Australian, of course he believes it.
The fact that it's not true would not influence his thinking in any way.
Re:NBN waste of money (Score:5, Informative)
We are a big country, I mean big, you may think its a long way down to the chemist but thats peanuts on the distances in Australia. We are fucking huge.
I used to live in a mining town in North West Western Australia. If you wanted to get to the beach that's a 5 hour drive laddie at 120 KM/h. If you wanted to go to target, 7 hours drive to Karratha mate. If you wanted to get to Perth, the capital of Western Australia that was a solid 15 hours of driving in a land that is regularly above 35 Degrees C and very sparcely populated.
When I went up through South Thailand by road I was surprised as hell to see signs of civilisation everywhere, farms, houses, villages. You couldn't go a single kilometre without seeing something. In Australia it's not only possible but quite easy to drive for six hours at 100 KM/h and not see another soul. When I went to school, I travelled 85 KM both ways in the blistering heat, luxury I tell you, luxury.