John Linton
.....and anyone who thinks differently is doomed to perpetual disappointment.(Governments are the best examples of jealous monopolists - you can check that with Bob Lee or Jeff Davis if you have their emails) .......and the lion is never going to lie down with the lamb without pretty negative consequences for the lamb and similarly baby goats should always refuse any invitations to lie down with the neighbourhood leopard if they ever want to get up again.
It will be interesting to read, if there ever is a chance to do so, what the 'review of Telstra's retail prices' comes up with - I would place a fairly large sum of money on nothing will change in any meaningful way - not that I am suggesting that there should be any change:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/telco-prices-under-watch/story-e6frfh4f-1225820136606er
In the days, and it is so long ago I can't remember when it actually was, that I would actually try and understand Telstra's "wholesale policies" I was consistently bemused by the ability of a Telstra employee to tell you an outright lie to your face as to what Telstra actually sold services for and therefore their justification for charging Exetel so much more than they charged any single residential customer for the same service. This was, of course, after December (was it 2004?) when they actually dropped their ADVERTISED price for ADSL to BELOW their published on the web WHOLESALE prices and the ACCC had a slam dunk case for forcing Telstra to, a year later, actually reducing the wholesale price and, forever after, move to a new pricing/selling policy.
Their new (protect us from the ACCC and those parasitic wholesale customers) methodology was essentially 'publish' a retail price on their web site so they could say to the ACCC "see our retail price is much higher than our wholesale price" and then use Salmat et alia to send out letters to various target end users, or send door to door 'representatives' or simply phone offering pricing that was way below wholesale. This allowed them to reply to any ACCC (or wholesale customer) enquiry with "look at the web site - stupid" and dismiss questions (that in my case cited the actual letter with its Telstra reference number) with "oh - that's just a one off promotion with many conditions"). So the ACCC is useless in that sort of scenario.
That's the way a monopoly gets to act and no-one who knows they are dealing with a monopoly has any reason to complain about it - and I'm not complaining and never have. If you know something and decide that you will ignore facts and burble on about fairness and unfairness then, at least mentally, you never got past the age of 15 and shouldn't be involved in the actual world. The whole concept of Krudds lies about the NBN2 (ONLY spoken in an attempt to make the dumber Labor supporters forget about his previous lies about the NBN1) is that monopolies are created because they are the only way to get very expensive things done. Having created a monopoly it is almost impossible to limit its monopoly practices - simply because you can seldom find a real way of doing that and because a commercial return has to be made on the investment.
Alternatively....
....we could play "lets pretend" and pretend that Krudd has done a feasibility study that has established that there is enough demand for the use of an NBN2 and that he has had the build costs and time frames audited by someone competent to do that and had established that such a service could be built at an affordable price and then sold to an end user at a price acceptable to an end user and that delivers a commercial profit to the investor and any subsequent owner of the NBN2. Yes I know - it's pure fantasy but that's Krudd - long on 'vision' - very short on delivery. So there you have a very, very expensive infrastructure with some sort of percentage of possible end users signed up to it...owned by.....the government...oops.....back to 1906 and the fiasco of a government owned monopoly that charges what its drone employees force it to for basic services that the end users don't want to pay but because the NBN2 management and employees want top salaries without doing any real work operating costs keep going up and those are the charges for the only service available. (all that nasty copper and those other DLSAMs are just rusting land fill now)
I can't immediately bring it mind but there was a similar situation in Australia in the not too distant past where the Government of the day (I think it was a Labor government) tried to break up a government owned monopoly because it charged ludicrously high prices for pathetic services and by breaking its monopoly true competition would produce better services at much lower prices. Any fool could have told them that was impossible but I think they went and tried to do it anyway. Does anyone remember how successful that was?
Never mind - I'm sure that Krudd, being an expert on every subject under the sun, will make no apologies to Australian working families for not making any of the mistakes possibly made by his predecessors. Why a government is required to build a commercial enterprise at all remains a mystery but then that's Kruddism for you - all promise based on getting re-elected and no delivery.
If there was a demand for a fibre network in Australia it would have already been built - wait a minute - there is a demand (at least in Sydney and Mebourne) and fibre is currently available to millions of users and presumably the suppliers of those networks are making money.
So why didn't they build it out to XX% of rural Australia - oh simple - because it couldn't be done profitably. But wait - didn't Telstra say it was going to build fibre out to 98% of Australians for $A5 billion....yes....but only if they could restrict access to themlelves and therefore claw back their 100% monopoly.
Oh - I remember now - but isn't the NBN2 a monopoly which Telstra will end up controlling? - well, yes - but we've got Krudd's word that Telstra will have to sell to other companies on a strictly wholesale model so that won't happen again. There definitely wont be an NBN2 list wholesale price and then Telstra making special "limited" offers to various end user demographics at below that price....which are usually their wholesale customers customers..... by co-incidence.
Oh well that's all right then - Krudd always knows what he's doing so he won't let a repeat of the Telecommunications ACT happen again then? I mean there won't be an ACCC oversight process to ensure that Telstra doesn't just jack up the wholesale prices to levels that are above the retail prices the Telstra owned and operated NBN2 charge to rake in the profits for themselves and use those profits to subsidise its own pricing to end users and drive all competitors out of business?
No of course not. You can be sure a brilliant mind like Krudd's coupled with his amazing breadth of knowledge of the communications industry and of commercial processes and practices generally (remember all of the experience he has in commerce?) coupled with Telstra's long track record of probity and fair dealing in the separation of retail and wholesale interests will ensure a great outcome for everyone.
On second thoughts - lets not play "lets pretend" - I have a pretty vivid imagination but it can't stretch remotely that far.