John Linton .......it appears to me that all these new 'experts' appear to have forgotten that what makes the current copper network so profitable is the line rental and the PSTN call charges......neither of which will be available in the future.....and if there was no revenue from line rental and call charges....then ADSL wouldn't be affordable (does anyone really think that $A2.50 a month recover the costs of connecting and maintaining a residential user to a national network?
Of course, all the dim wits in the current Federal government haven't got the slightest idea of how a network works so they aren't aware of the issues involved. However Telstra, the overwhelming beneficiary of charging sky high prices for EVERY Australian to use the network that had been purchased in the Telecom Australia sale some 15 years ago, would know the figures very well. So, what Australians have been paying for telephony services since the inception of the service over 100 years ago has determined how much money has been available for Telstra's previous iterations to waste in the multiple ways they have chosen to waste it including the ludicrous feather bedding of their personnel, particularly 'management', structures.
The same problem besets Optus and, to a lesser extent, the other larger telephone service providers. What are they going to replace all that profit with based on its sky high pricing (forced on everyone else by Telstra) which actually distorts there current overall revenue and the personnel structures used to support that revenue? Obviously Telstra and Optus can replace wire line revenue with mobile telephony revenue but that still leaves a massive profit hole and a much diminished 'sized' company in terms of revenue and personnel establishment.
So what happens if fibre replaces copper over the coming years and, as is currently one of the conditions, the copper is turned off progressively as fibre reaches the different areas? Telstra, Optus, whoever is currently providing the PSTN connection and call services is faced with replacing them with.....what? The same cost services over fibre? Dream on. No future telephone service is going to be based on anything remotely like the 130+ year old concept of having a piece of media connecting an end user to another user. They will use their mobile (probably MoIP and if they still have something as clunky as a "fibre line" telephone it will be VoIP at VoiP costs.....currently 80% lower than residential telephone charges and continuing to fall. So all current providers that derive revenue and profit from wire line rentals and call charges will see that money disappear, one way or another within a very few years.
Every scenario I can see or have heard offered doesn't address the major issue facing ANY replacement of the current PSTN services which the WHOLE Australian communications industry is based - how does an industry 'down size' when faced by political intervention which pays no heed to the current complex infrastructure delivery? No point in saying that commercial solutions always sort themselves out - the 'NBN2' isn't a commercial solution....it's political idealism based on an ignorant electorate's support because only the 'benefit' (if you can call speed a benefit) has been offered with the costs being not supplied but being deliberately hidden.
So....no need to panic.....there is enough anti-Telstra sentiment around (and quite understandably) to continue to 'persuade' the idiots in the parliament, the media and the always pig ignorant electorate that an 'NBN2' is the right way for Australia to go....and perhaps in the grand sceme of everything progressing it could be - so little is known it's impossible for ANYONE to make such a call.
I can speak totally impartially as Exetel has no wire line rental or call revenue (except ADSL2inc services which comprise less than 3% of total revenue) and we face no problems in losing large chunks of wire line rental revenue and the profits from ludicrously high call charges. How Telstra and Optus deal with that loss is, I am sure, the subject of a great deal of analysis and planning. The question you have to ask yourself is (apart from "Well - do you feel lucky?") is - "how dose a whole industry manage to downsize it's operations when/if confronted with a massive drop in some part of its revenue and a massive increase in its base costs (no more $2.50 a month connectivity to end users anywhere in Australia for you).
Sometimes, once every ice age or so, it is better to be small and unencumbered in terms of the services you offer even if that was achieved at a significant loss to your ease of life - this seems to me to be such a time.
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