John Linton ....government monopolies have completely different 'rules'.
I read this yesterday:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/379187/optus_calls_nbn_volume_discounts/
which I had long realised would only been a matter of time for it to be raised overtly but I was disappointed that Exetel's largest supplier was the one to do it. Perhaps they were only doing it to ensure Telstra didn't quietly reach some 'special relationship' deal? The points against such price structuring have all been made in the article - in the days of automated systems there is no cost benefit of 'volume' - each transaction is 'unique' in that it addresses the need to 'turn on' a service to a unique location via some process that incurs the same cost for each unique end user location.
In a competitive commercial environment the scenario is very different where two or more suppliers are vying for business from multiple wholesale buyers and need to make their different offerings more attractive to gain and retain wholesale customers in that competitive environment. In the case of the 'NBN2' no such competition exists and therefore no 'special pleading' exists. With the 'NBN2' you either buy the service at the price nominated or you don't buy the service at all. As Julia Roberts' character remarked to the Richard Gere character in Pretty Woman - "I appreciate this whole seduction thing you've got goin' here, but let me give you a tip - I'm a sure thing. Okay?".....and that, I thought, was the one and only benefit of the government monopoly as far as the end user was concerned - they actually knew what the COST of the 'NBN2' port was to the wholesale provider and could clearly see what 'mark up' the various resellers were asking them to pay and whether they felt inclined to pay for the supplier's advertising campaigns and internal wastefulness and.........
Now the actual COST charged by the 'NBN2' may well be too high simply because a government monopoly is easily, and without a shadow of a doubt, the most inefficient way of delivering anything. However, that is history now as the electorate at the last election chose, well sort of if you count two renegade, pork barreling hayseeds and a couple of princesses, to allow the 'NBN2' to happen and therefore "democracy" has elected to pay far too much money to eliminate all future competition for a residential fibre service. Done and dusted - like the $27 billion of tax payers money annually p***ed away on militarism it is simply one more burden imposed on tax paying Australians because they are collectively stupid enough to allow it to happen (that's what stupid people/sheep are for - to allow the unscrupulous and venal to shear them until they bleed).
But a government monopoly that introduces a volume cost structure is about as sensible as inviting President Marcos back to 'power share' in the democratic government of the Philippines. I thought the whole point of wasting $50 billion building another fibre network with tax payer money was to eliminate Telstra from ensuring there was only one viable supplier of communications services in Australia? And now Optus is suggesting that that tenuous advantage is legislated away? Can anyone in this benighted country keep their lying stories straight for longer than it takes a politician to pocket a brown envelope? Or is their judgment that the whole country is so incredibly stupid that no-one has enough memory capacity to remember what they said last time they were offered some justification for doing something?
Clearly the latter.
PS: ....and the mind blowingly unbelievable hypocrisy of the year award goes to.......Telstra ......yet again:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/community-card-dealt-in-plea-against-monopoly-20110309-1bnzz.html
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