John Linton
Assuming the lawsuit commenced by Telstra against the current Federal Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, does no collateral damage to the contract she has just signed:
Helen Coonan claimed, after formally signing the contract on September 9th 2007 that Opel had already commenced work on the network, which is targeted for completion by June 2009, and "The government will independently test the network to ensure that coverage is achieved to a very high standard, and that the service in rural and regional areas is comparable the standard obtained in metropolitan Australia."
She added: "In tandem with this agreement, Elders and Optus have also entered into a joint venture agreement which has committed them to contribute assets and investments of over $900 million to establish Opel Networks as a structurally separated 'wholesale only' company that will operate and maintain the network, and that will sell services on a transparent and equivalent basis to parent entities Elders and Optus, and to any other broadband provider in the market."
then there may be another option for providing wireless based broadband services to regional Australia (or at least parts of it) by mid 2009 - which would impact satellite service in those areas quite considerably I would think which have, largely, been made possible by previous Federal Government grants to provide broadband to 'the bush'. It would be nice to see a major "wholesale only" carrier in place that would allow real competiition for the first time on at least one area of Australia; but that may be too optimistic a view.
If only the Federal Government had listened to the advice of breaking up the 'old Telstra' in to a retailer and a wholesaler before selling both parts there would be no problems now and no need to invest in yet another infrastructure start up. While it was obvious to me (and I cheerfully admit to being self interestedly biased along with so many others) clearly the Federal Government formed the view that no-one in their right mind would buy a Telstra Retail company with its bloated pricing and huge over staffing and its inherent and endemic wastefullness created by 100 years of cost plus retail price setting based on being a monopoly and monopoly's inherent and inevitable non-competitiveness.
So us poor Australians are left with a built in monopoly (Telstra) in the hands of people whose only purpose is to increase the monopoly without the controls of a 'benign' government who see a wider responsibility to the 'people of Australia'. So how many more of these new initiatives (such as Opel) will this and future Federal Governments need to create in their rearguard action to attempt to restrain the Telstra 'beast' they have unleashed?
I suppose if the polls are correct we will get a new government who, at this preliminary stage, appears to be equally bereft of ideas on how to address the Telstra private monopoly issue with their version of providing funding to yet another group to build a new fiber network outside Telstra's control - Maybe Deutsche Telekom will make a better job of taking taxpayer dollars and providing something in return?