John Linton
....has worked better than he could ever have hoped for.
I read this yesterday evening:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/twisted-wire/soa/NBN-should-be-free-says-economist/
not with any degree of real interest (you can find some time serving academic at any time or place ready to make whatever crackpot statement you can scare a head line out of) but as an indication of what happens when the people the electorate has given access to the public trough are megalomaniacs. I realise that the 'electorate' almost certainly doesn't understand anything about anything and therefore they perceive no differences between the two main political parties in this country (each being, in their different ways, just avatars of some sort of sporting team their parents 'followed') but I do understand a little about Australian communications and this 'NBN2' madness is going to cost the country dearly and I believe there is a possibility it will cost me personally almost everything I have tried to put aside to allow me to, one day, stop having to work to pay the bills if it works out as badly as it may do.
It's not that some sort of d***head actually articulated a crazy point that communications should be a government handout (like the dole and all the other social circuses that continue to be part of the way to trough access and then maintaining it) it is that Krudd's ego is so grotesquely large these days that it is a possibility at all. Together with this:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/telstra-in-a-tizz-over-the-irate-hum-of-its-parts-20091022-hbdj.html
and, I can't be bothered to find the reference but it was reported, the statement by Barnaby Joyce that the Nationals may split from the coalition and vote with Labor on splitting Telstra before Christmas I, personally, look at the near future with utter dismay.....and please remember that I have no desire for Telstra and its monopoly remaining the way it is - although the Sol (wholesale customers are parasites) Trujillo is no longer looting the country there are no real signs of change at Telstra that I can see.
Krudd, the cargo cult devotee, can only "split Telstra" (with the objective of resuming the Telstra network into the 'NBN2') by paying Telstra's shareholders the money they, or the original holders of the shares they subsequently bought, the SAME amount of money that the original shareholders paid for the shares less a slight discount for the Telstra retail operation. (not some value based on today's share price). There is NO doubt that Telstra itself will take this to the High Court and win if the Krazy Egotist tries to compulsorily re-acquire the assets its predecessor sold off to the public at any price unacceptable to a shareholder's meeting. Krudd will do this because he also can't face the thought of 1.2 million Telstra shareholders voting against him in the election that follows him paying anything less. So - all that will take three years to play out unless Krudd caves in immediately and pays the $30 billion that Telstra will have to ask for out of due fiduciary responsibility. Either way it has totally f***ed the Australian communications marketplace for the foreseeable future.
Of course there are years before the end crunch of this Krudd grandstanding ends up in whatever disaster is going to eventuate and there is still enough money to be paid by the various communications users around Australia for most current suppliers to remain in some sort of business over that time but what point is there in 'investing' in any alternate infrastructure developments until certainty, of whatever kind, returns to the communications marketplace? Ony mobile? Quite possibly - though I would have no idea how either Telstra or Optus would be looking at their current residential wire line telephony and data income streams as my only concern is for Exetel's shareholders and customers and employees.
Krudd's back of the bus ticket nonsensical 'plan' to save himself from his own lies when his original 'NBN' collapsed and was seen to be the nonsensical farce it always was has now generated a life of its own and even ignoring the lunatic recommending free comms access to every Australian home and business the ambit of destruction of the current communications industry has reached quite overwhelming proportions already and the proportions are continuing to grow. The only thing that Krudd, like every charlatan that has ever existed, is now contemplating is how much money of the $A30 billion asking price he has to print and how much can he pay in terms of 'share scrip' in the 'NBN2' to buy off Telstra and as importantly (more importantly to him probably) Telstra's shareholders.
Did anyone seriously vote to give Krudd and his ill educated bunch of union thugs access to the trough in the expectation that they would wreck the Australian communications industry?
Alarmist? If you choose to think that - but then do you have all of your retirement money invested in a small communications company and are responsible for the well being of 70 employees and some quite essential services being delivered to over 100,000 customers?
If you don't then, right at this moment, I would prefer to be you. As I don't have that choice I need some inspiration......there has to be at least one thing that can be done to 'fire proof' the future....which is a path that we started on back in February and we are definitely making progress but I am now wondering whether the hyper aggressive target I originally set is aggressive enough.