broadband and Telstra

[miriam_e]

Got a propaganda leaflet from Telstra. (For those of you not in Australia Tesltra is our biggest telecommunications company -- they used to be a somewhat benign government-owned monopoly, but since being privatised have taken a holy "Greed is Good" approach to everything they do. Swindling their customers at any chance.) This leaflet purports to complain that government regulations are keeping Telstra from getting broadband to the Australian public. What a load of crap! What is keeping broadband restricted in Australia is the incredibly high prices charged, and this is a result of how Telstra still own most of the infrastructure and force their competitors' prices up. The whole idea of selling off Telstra was a con from the start. It should have been kept as a public entity and used as a way to ensure private companies don't take advantage of their customers. Instead, a greedy government sold our heritage off for quick cash and we will pay for it in decreased services and increased prices forever afterward.

Have you noticed how few free, value-added services remained after Telstra was privatised?
Have you noticed how free-market advocates trumpetted that since privatisation Telstra phone call charges have fallen? But have you noticed how your bill has continued to get bigger because although individual calls are slightly lower, rental prices have risen manyfold.
Have you noticed how these supposedly cheaper call prices still keep it far more expensive to phone a nearby city here in Australia than to phone the other side of the planet?
Have you noticed how costly mobile phones are compared to land-lines? And did you know it is actually cheaper to run a mobile network than a land-line one?
Have you noticed how much cheaper mobile phones are in other countries?

Telstra, as a company, have become the worst bunch of liars. This leaflet is an example of the bullshit they dish out now.

If Telstra were given complete control of the broadband market their current performance of providing the worst broadband service of all gives us an idea of what we could expect.

Comments

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

I think they're concerned about the falling number of their customers. They're sad because their share-price continues to fall, no matter how many jobs they axe or send offshore. They're peeved that their mobile numbers are static despite their recent splurge on "mobile broadband" propaganda (it's little faster than dial-up and unreliable...sure it's wireless, but it's far from broadband).
And, now they're shit-scared because Labor is saying they'll fund a state-owned fibre-to-the-home scheme that all carriers will have an equal utilisation of. Effectively, this kill Telstra's monopoly on outdated copper wire, which is really what's choking broadband in this country (after it was dropped on the floor after birth by (now ex-)Senator Richard Alston)). I predict that if Labor gets elected, it'll sell what's left of the failing company while the shares are still worth something, then the company will shrivel within a decade. Meanwhile, the government will once-again own and run the dominant carrier infrastructure.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I remember feeling really upset when Telstra decided not to bother with continuing the optical fibre rollout. While other countries were stepping up their optic fibre deployment Australia was going backwards. [sigh]

I hope Testra do crumble and die, along with all the other ripoff telecommunications companies in Australia. I hope a free, peer-to-peer systems springs up (I've had some thoughts on how to kick-start just such a thing). The only way we will really boost communications is to make it free. Imagine the boom in other things that would enable!