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."
If Telstra is for it, you can bet it's no good (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Mod parent up. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Mod Parent up (Score:2)
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
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Technically it is a parliamentary system, the leader is always reliant upon the majority of members to stay in power and can be tossed out in a single day, so not just minority parties, buts also the supporting party and even the main opposition party.
The reality is Telstra either accepted it or ended up competing against a government provided competing infrstructure, that would severely undercut it's dying copper infrastructure with a brand new fibre to the home infrastructure. The main reason for the b
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Bad Headline. (Score:2)
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 Austr
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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.
Tell that to customers of Foxtel - Telstra ran the Cable Internet part of that venture and they dragged their heels moving to the DOCSIS 3.0 standard [broadbandguide.com.au] (providing 100Mbps). The reason? They had no competition. Why spend a huge amount of money providing a desired service when your customers are stuck on your service anyway? Just sit on your arse and keep taking their money!
And Bigpond still had preferential treatment for ADSL service. A bit too far from the exchange? Your chosen ISP said Telstra knocked back y
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the "rack" was full and nobody in his neighbourhood could get ADSL through other ISP's
Happened to me too a few months ago. Still waiting for new naked ADSL slots to be made available.
Telstra was a monopoly and abused their position, no doubt about it. I'm glad it's finally being broken up.
Very much so.
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same plan... different country is all. it HAS meant BETTER deals and increased competition here most notably for the telecoms industry
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Well I think that http://www.itnews.com.au/News/215939,nbn-co-to-buy-telstra-network-for-11-billion.aspx [itnews.com.au]$11,000,000,000 counts as a "massive upside" in anyone's books...
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Telstra supports it for 2 reasons:
1.Not separating means they would be locked out of buying spectrum for next generation LTE services
and 2.By separating, they get to sell the copper network to the government for $11 billion whereas if they dont separate and sell to the government, the government builds the NBN anyway without Telstra and Telstra is left holding onto an obsolete copper network that cant compete with the NBN.
About time! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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As much as I agree with you, as soon as the Liberal party gets into power they will sell it off regardless.
It doesn't make much sense to sell it off but these are politicians, since when do they do a sanity check on anything.
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Our governments just love to sell off vital infrastructure, don't they?
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All governments love to do that. Even the US (especially at the State Level) tends to privitize quite a bit. There are very few public utilities left. I mean I find it patently absurd that prisons have even been privatized.
Basically if a state/local public utility could be profitable, it is usually privatized. Those that cannot turn a profit are often, but not always kept public. If it would not be profitable the only option is for the government to pay the difference. The easy way to do that is to run it d
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Liberals may be quicker to sell-off assets, but Labor is ALSO fond of selling our (taxpayer) property.
How many times has NSW Labor tried to privatise various utilities? (especially under Iemma)
Sell-off assets for billions -> promptly spend the billions -> look like heroes to voters
But what will they sell when there are no assets left?
And some assets are quite, shall we say, profitable [abc.net.au]
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Just a couple of months ago actually. A surprise for many, that's for sure.
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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.
As long as NBNco is only a wholesale bandwidth provider, their monopoly status doesn't matter because everyone's prices will rise at once.
Internet is going to become a regulated utility in Australia
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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).
A slight correction of my own: it reads like you're suggesting the Senate can't introduce legislation. They can introduce most types of legislation except appropriation and taxation bills. In practice you're probably right though---most legislation seems to originate in the House of Reps.
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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)
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: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.
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Sir, you get:
+2 internets for reference to the late Douglas Adams
+1 internets for reference to monty python
+3 real life merit points for telling it how it fucking is
Good job.
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I hear that. Facts about my home:
* 2.08 people per km^2 here in Wyoming (Australia has 2.83)
* 30 minutes from a town with a four-digit population
* 1 hour from any McDonald's
* 2 hours from any Walmart
* Just over 10 meters of snow per year
* We've already had *highs* of -15c this year
* Highs above freezing are unusual between mid-november and mid-march
* The ground is completely snow-covered for 6-7 months a year
* Understandably, half the population moves away over the winter.
But, just to show that someone her
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When I say "small town" I mean 12 houses and a public phone box, OTOH it was bigger than the nearby town of Muddy Flat which consisted of one 1960's style caravan and two road signs that marked the border of the town.
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Luxury, we had to walk 3 hours to the pub and the only thing they had to drink there was watered down methylated spirits and it was bore water too.
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To give you an idea of how sparsely populated Western Australia is, here are some facts: The state of Western Australia occupies about 1/3 of the entire Australian continent (over 2.5 million km^2). The entire population of the state is about 2.3 million. Of those 2.3 million, 1.6 million live in one city (Perth).
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In situations like that it sort of makes me wonder who owns all the land. In America you would be passing by people selling trinkets, roadside diners, etc. at least once every 1-2 hours.
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What's to own? Road traffic is mainly road trains so why bother. Population density is 0.0001 in most of WA. As the poster above you pointed out, there are 2.3 million people in WA and 1.6 million live in a 80 KM radius of one place (land mass of Western Australia is 2,645,615 KM2).
Land that is away from Perth is essent
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The government still owns most of it in one way or another. Large chunks of desert are Aboriginal tribal land.
You want a house for $20? I can't find the link, but there were economically collapsing small towns pretty much giving away somewhere to live. The catch being, you were expected to actually live there.
There's basically five cities in Australia, with long stretches of fuck-all between them.
(I'm living in London. One-third the area of Perth, five times the population. Wide open spaces or Ankh-Morpork?
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It sounds a bloody nuisance for all concerned! And what does anyone gain, mineral resources? I can understand a few such towns, but it really seemed, from my SINGLE trip to Australia a few years ago, that there are developed cities on the coastline of the country, and
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Towns in the middle of nowhere are either digging stuff up, growing stuff or shipping stuff and most of this cant be done in cities. There is very little that survives on it's own or via tourism in Australia. Most of our population is centred in our cities along the coast.
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Both sides of my family come from NZ mining roots. I can understand mining towns, its mining towns that are literally 10 hours from anywhere else that I find odd!
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Here's a picture to help illustrate your point. [amazonaws.com]
Sigh, (Score:2, Insightful)
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 f
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Yes they have the same owner, which is a pity since it used to be one of our better rags.
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Yes they have the same owner, which is a pity since it used to be one of our better rags.
Based on the month I just spent back home, it still is.
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Yes, the rest are actually worse. The only readable news outlet is Crikey.
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Yes, the rest are actually worse. The only readable news outlet is Crikey.
Agreed. The $120 I spent on my Crikey subscription has been fantastic value. I just wish the mainstream media would pick up on some of the stuff they report.
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+1 this guy. I'd never thought of comparing the NBN to the baby bonus but it makes sense. Both are investments in the future, and if it's my taxes on the line, I'd rather invest in infrastructure that benefits the whole country and will help the country stay competetive internationally than pay some idiots to have a kid so they can buy a bigger TV.
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i smell astroturf.
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As an aside, you do know that 90%+ of Australia's debt is private?
Yes, most of our debt comes from people who can barely afford their first home buying a second house as an investment property.
Our national debt is less then 10% of our GDP, the US national debt is about 70-80% of it's GDP and Greece didn't get into real trouble until it was 110% of its GDP (being dependent on tourism, Greece's GDP isn't much either).
Not that it matters, as a taxpayer and net saver I'm going to be as
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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.
Who is subsidising who? Despite our profiligate (private) spending practices, we as a country are not collapsing into debt, wheras other countries with similiar lifestyle aspirations (e.g. the US and the UK) are. Ever wondered why that is? Well, the reason is that we are paying for the lifestyles of the city dwellers by - literally - digging up regional australia and selling it overseas - mindblowingly huge chunks of the country on conveyors, trains and ships as we speak, making their way to power stations
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No money goes back to the regions
ha. 'the city', and by that we generally mean sydney and melbourne, have been propping up 'the country' for generations with tax dollars from manufacturing and tertiary services ( and the like )
and now, with the voracious chinese economy booming to provide a viable market for all that red dirt, the bleating about 'contribution' comes up.
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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 networ
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The NBN has one role and is not likely to attempt to become the diseased octopus that T
Now maybe we can get some decent internet limits (Score:1)
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.
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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?
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That deal is upload and download, so still only 500gb download. worse it is split up between peak and offpeak.
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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.
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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.
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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/ [on.net] 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 s
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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.
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plus its divided between up and down....so 250gb down peak + 250gb down offpeak.
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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.
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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.
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prices are transit costs + whatever Telstra feels like adding on because they can get away with it.
futureproof... (Score:2)
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
Yes, futureproof... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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The copper network is great IF you have direct copper back to the exchange AND your copper is in good condition AND you are close enough to the exchange to get ADSL. If you have crappy coper, if you are too far from the exchange, if your line contains equipment incompatible with ADSL or you are stuck on a RIM with no available ports or really slow speeds, the copper network isn't so great.
With the NBN, all those problems go away.
Also, they arent going to string the fiber on power lines or poles in most plac
Telstra leased it, didn't sell it (Score:2)
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The copper is old - keeping it going is not free (Score:2)
Wha-a-at? (Score:2)
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.
It needs to be said (Score:2)
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 th
All the important points here are being missed. (Score:1)
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