John Linton I made a reference to Sharp Airlines yesterday as an example of a start up 'air line' that was doing more for SW Victorian residents and businesses than had been done since Sir Reginald Ansett moved from Hamilton to Melbourne.
I don't fly around Australia as much as used to do, in fact hardly at all over the past few years, but I'm constantly reminded, by my children and other lowest possible price minded people, that you can travel almost anywhere in Australia now for a tiny fraction of what I used to pay. I also constantly see ads in the newspapers I still read in their 'printed form' for flights from Sydney to, say Cairns, for $A19.95 one way or to Perth for $A29.95 one way compared to the well over $A500 even the cheapest flight on Qantas 'standard' is.
So de-regulation of the old "two airlines" policy did really bring cheap/affordable by anyone air travel to Australia.
Which means that it's possible for real competition to produce real benefits to end users by some sort of government decision making......except in the case of telecommunications.....at least the parts of telecommunications that Telstra retains total control of.
It must be obvious to Blind Freddy that the 'deregulation' of telecommunications hasn't begun to achieve what the deregulation of the airlines has achieved wherever Telstra was allowed to keep control of the delivery structures.
The starkest example is mobile telecommunications of course which, of itself, clearly demonstrates why the rest of the deregulation of the telecommunications didn't work.
If you wanted a license to build a mobile network in Australia you could get one. Then you needed something like the ability to invest around $A5 billion in a network and the ability to operate at a loss for ten years while you built your network (in competition with Telstra who had 100% of the market when Optus began that process). The end results, after 17 years are that there are very low costs of acquiring and using a mobile phone because three competitors to Telstra have made the large investments necessary to build service networks that offer comparable services and price is the only/major differentiator.
So, in mobile telecommunications, it's as cheap to make a mobile call as almost anywhere else in the world - cheaper than in many other 'developed' countries even given Australia's "unfriendly" geography and size.
Halleluja!!!!!!...deregulation really works....providing the competitor to Telstra doesn't have to use anything provided by Telstra. (and, yes, I'm aware of the inter-billing problems and the back haul issues around much of Australia).
This 'deregulation success' is repeated in the capital cities where various companies laid their own cable networks so that large commercial users could connect their telephones and data networks using cable pricing not determined by Telstra. Even tiny companies like Exetel can provide such services by buying wholesae from these companies at rates that are around a quarter of what Telstra charges for the same service (Building A connected to Building B/Exetel POP using fibre on someone other than Telstra's cable.
So large scale fibre connections and mobile services all benefit from deregulation and provide low cost alternatives to Telstra's very high/excessive pricing.
But all other services that have to use the 'bequeathed' telephone and data networks remain hugely expensive.
There's a simple lesson for Conroy and Rudd - and happily for them it's one they have, or their political party has, been declaiming for over 11 years....
Don't allow Telstra "Retail" to own or control the cost of any part of "Telstra Engineering/Networking".
It works everywhere else in the world and only Australia suffers from having the previously government owned monopoly continue to control the access to and pricing of basic services.
The results are obvious: where Telstra is forced to truly compete (mobile/fibre connectivity) prices are as low as anywhere else in the world; where Telstra has no competition (home phone lines/ADSL) Australian prices are the highest in the world.
Anyone see a connection....Kev?....Steve?......Bueller?......anyone at all in Canberra?.....
Guess not.