John Linton
I came across this while catching up on the Australian comms news I missed over the last ten days:
http://www.commsday.com/comment/reply/222
I couldn't find 'Kate McKenzie's' comments but, reading these 'open letters' it seems pretty easy to assess what she said.
I think these two comments sum up either the naievety of iPrimus and Internode or could be put into the "No Sh** Sherlock" category of stating the bleeding obvious:
"Firstly, competitors like iPrimus and Internode are being blocked from installing broadband equipment in public telephone exchanges."
and:
"Secondly, where access to exchanges is permitted Telstra is imposing unnecessary and inefficient design and build processes."
Why would it come as a surprise to anyone, especially communications companies competing with Telstra for more than five minutes, that Telstra would do everything in its power to ensure that 'competitors' had as hard a time as possible in deploying hardware aimed at reducing Telstra's monopoly of providing services to Australian users?
The iPrimus spokesperson goes on to say:
"These processes can delay builds for up to 2 to 3 years".
He might have needed to have proof read this particular statement as, from memory, the whole DSLAM in Telstra exchanges process is only barely ticking over its second year and he claims to have over 100 exchanges already equipped - but he is probably correct in looking at the scenario in the future.
Telstra's recent 'cave in' to Crazy Kevin in saying "aw shucks - 'cos it's you Kev we'll just turn on those extra 900 exchanges that we've rushed to fill up with with our own ADSL2 equipment so we can claim there's no more room for competitors - oops - sorry - because we feel its our duty to assist you in your endeavours to deliver high speed broadband to every Australian" is blatant hypocrisy.
All Telstra has done is to, as quietly as possible, complete their ADSL2 build out of all the 'profitable' exchanges (large ADSL usage exchanges where competitors have the most ADSL1 customers) so they can now claim to competitors seeking to install their own equipment there - "sorry, there is no room for your equipment and there are no current plans to increase the capacity due to (insert your choice of unovercomable reason here). They will then get a large room full of telemarketers to call all the competitor's ADSL1 customers offering them incredibly cheap/free incentives to move from the competitor's ADSL1 service to BigPond's ADSL2 service with the competitor being unable to offer an alternative.
This would be simply one part of an overall Telstra strategy to ensure that all investments by its competitors in ADSL2 DSLAMs are unprofitable in the shorter term and disastrous financial 'albatrosses' in the longer term as they cosy up to Kev and Stevie to get the fed's $A8 billion to make competitive investments in DSLAMS a financial no-no by running fibre to all residential areas where competitors have DSLAMs effectively rendering them redundant.
Too cynical?
Possibly, but not probably.
And this is surprising to iPrimus and interNode et alia how?
All deployments of 'competitive' infrastructures that rely on some aspect of Telstra 'co-operation' are not likely to be successful until/unless Telstra is 're-organised' in to an effective structure that delivers at least the possibility of a competitive, and therefore lower cost to the end user, telecommunications entity.
There's no problem in doing that and the Labor party after eleven years of constant criticism (rightly in this case) of the previous government's bad decision on privatising Telstra 'as a whole' instead of splitting it in to a network component and a retail service component can, now it's in office, do what they have always said should have been done by the coalition in the first place.
Any bets on them doing that to their new best mate?