John Linton I was glad I made the effort to go to Kardinia to see the Cats unfurl their premiership flag but unfortunately Qantas apparently blamed the change to daylight saving for the second week in a row for disrupting their flight schedule. So although we arrived In Melbourne the previous Friday and leisurely drove our hire car to Tullamarine on Sunday in plenty of time to pick my middle daughter (a Geleong supporter of probably even greater intensity than me - parents have a lot to answer for) up at 10.30 from her Hobart flight Qantas advised us that "due to computer confusion with the change of daylight saving....the flight would not arrive until 11.45.
Due to the excellent freeway system between Tullamarine and Geelong, and driving at well over the speed limit all the way we actually made it to the ground in slightly less than an hour - only to find that the car park was full. After illegally parking (and consequently getting a $110.00 parking ticket in a country town for goodness sake) we found that our season tickets were 'mislaid' which then took another ten minutes to issue temporary passes. So we saw the arrival of the AFL and VFL premiership flags arrive via the also late running parachutists but missed the unfurling ceremony.
We then watched one of the worst games Geelong has played since the bad old days only redeemed by Jack Hawkins' son Tom taking one of the best contested goal square marks I've seen and Geelong did get the four points. The rest of the game was dreadful.
On the flight back to Sydney I reviewed the pricing I had done over the previous few days a various odd moments with the aim of putting it in place early this week. Perhaps it was the day's disappointments and 'hassles' but my mind couldn't shake off the view that wholesaling ADSL and other communications services in Australia was an increasingly pointless concept that was almost well past its 'use by date'.
When you think about it the Telecommunications Act had to ensure access to the then current Telecom network because it had taken 100 plus years to create and no company could have ever competed with a privatised Telecom Australia if such provisions had not been made.
However, the then naive assumption was that the newly established competitors with Telcom/Telstra would then build their own networks that would over time allow them to compete with Telstra without having to pay money to Telstra by using their own networks.
This has, of course, happened - via mobile telephony that is now beginning to be used for data and with the increasing speeds of data and the increasingly more efficient use of spectrum is becoming what the purpose of the Telecommunications Act was all about - multiple companies competing with each other for the end users communications spend.
If there are four strong mobile companies in a small country like Australia then we are better served than most Western countries in terms of service provider choice. If the promises of LTE become even half of the reality they are estimated to be then the number of end users who will use 'wire line' technologies will fall dramatically and the major users in terms of spend (big business/big government) can be serviced via the 'wire line' networs that have already been establish b competitors to Telstra in the major cities and larger regional areas.
So - no-one would need to buy from Telstra and Telstra's "hatred" of wholesale customers would go away along with all the pointless expense of 'dispute resolution'. None of the other mobile network owners would need to wholesale their services - unless they really wanted to in the true use of wholesale - they can subtract their sales and service costs and provide access to their networks at a true realistic cost because they WANT to not because they are REGULATED to.
Even Telstra might then come to the conclusion that they could wholesale some of their services because it would provide an equally cost effective method of earning revenue and profit - unlikely I know but just barely possible.
However it could equally be the case that all four, or perhaps five, of the current providers would decide that wholesaling is too hard and not do it at all except for specific jvs to try out new ideas without disturbing their 'brand' images and viability.
What ever actually transpires over the next three years it could be the case that no wholesaling of communications services will exist beyond 2012.