John Linton ...apart from people who dig trenches?
Well, on that basis (and realising that it really didn't matter who was going to manage the project) I bought some Leighton's shares over the last few days and have made a handsome profit as I figured that many people would pick Leighton as one of the beneficiaries of billions of dollars worth of trench digging round Australia and in any event their shares were pretty low and their past dividend policies pretty solid so it wasn't much of a risk. I also figured that with a realistic sized network already they would be a hot favourite to expand it to provide part of the backbone for the proposed network (rather than starting to build yet another set of trenches).
Scattering around $A20 billion dollars over the coming few years can't do any harm to the people who get some of it though most of those will be multinational equipment manufacturers and 'consultants'. Companies like Leightons will get a fair bit of "construction work" and a fair bit of that will be in regional and rural areas so the old FDR 'work for welfare' concepts will get another run after 75 years - though the concept of out of work and unemployable merchant bankers trying to wield a pick and shovel in the blazing sun of an out back summer before returning to their mug of soup and their bed roll under a Coolibah tree is a bit hard to get your head around.
And then, of course, there's Telstra.....what will become of Telstra if some entity builds a brand new national data network? I guess they'll still have telephone calls and copper lines to make them over.
New CEO due within three months and, hopefully, a new chairman and a major board shake up together with some 'policy reversals' will make for an interesting month or so mid-year. Telstra has been brought to the brink of a true turning point in communications delivery in Australia by the American carpetbaggers who plunged this country in to communications hell based on their personal greed and woeful knowledge of the Telecommunications ACT and Australian politics - at least they've all gone back home now (or almost) with their ill gotten gains leaving Australia both financially and service delivery poorer.
So the 'brave new world' remains a shimmering mirage but after a year long delay Stupid Stephen gets to become the scapegoat for whatever now happens - I was wrong - I didn't think he would last past September 2008; now who will Krudd appoint as ambassador to the Holy See? Can anyone really see him controlling a national infrastructure build? Maybe he is off to Rome after the announcement of whatever it is?
I was going to take some time away from residential communications based on the hiatus that would ensue once the 'NBN' was given to some entity to make happen as I figure that very little will happen anywhere in communications Australia until the 'final selection' has some time to announce its implementation schedule and whatever legal issues arise from that are dealt with in the various courts - my guess was nothing much would happen for 12 to 18 months and I could do other more useful things while that reached some form of conclusion.
That still seems to me the best thing to do and much of the work that we have done in residential plan re-positioning over the first three months of this calendar year has been based on those premises. We still have to resolve what we do in Tasmania - but that's almost done as long as the Government gets the money to build its own network as part of the NBN and get rid of Telstra completely - and we will continue to build out the Australian network based on whatever growth (or non-growth) occurs over the remainder of 2009, The main thing is the build out of the VoIP capabilities and the ongoing development of SMS and FAX and, of course, our continuing attempts at finding a way/ways of more rapidly growing HSPA and mobile.
Personally, I need some time to devote to other things after spending virtually every waking second of the past five years thinking about how to keep Exetel alive and then continually growing in the various residential marketplaces we address. I have never been particularly comfortable outside the larger business marketplaces and I'm pretty sure I have no more to add to 'residential strategies'.....at least not until I recover some 'freshness' in thinking and also some interest in understanding how/if a small Australian communications company has any place in the "new Australian communications marketplaces of Krudd's grand plans" (perhaps that should be Krudd's grand back of the proverbial bus ticket scribblings).
Perhaps Telstra will now become more reasonable to deal with - yes, I know.....and pigs might fly...but maybe the prospect of being 'broken up' will cause some re-thinking along the lines of "what if we had a wholesale operation and no-one came"? I realise that it is well beyond the boundaries of current fantasy but in these "Krudd's New Deal" reincarnation days it might just be possible. Who knows - perhaps there will be a sensible wholesale/retail communications market in Australia where variety and innovation replaces mediocrity and "me tooism"?
What was that pink thing that just briefly obscured my window?