Government To Force Telstra To Structurally Separate Wholesale And Retail
Somebody get me some popcorn: This could get very messy. Today Senator Conroy announced that the Rudd government has made some pretty major changes to telecommunications laws that will require Telstra to structurally separate its wholesale and retail businesses. And if they don’t do it voluntarily, the government’s going to bring the pain…
Apparently the government and Telstra have been talking about this for awhile, so it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise to the company. Of course, that doesn’t mean they won’t fight it. Considering how much friction there has been between the company and the government over the past few years, you’d expect a confrontation.
Here are some of the restrictions Conroy announced this morning:
If Telstra don’t play along and do thins voluntarily, the Government will change the Telecommunications Act 1997 so that:
* Telstra conduct its network operations and wholesale functions at arm’s length from the rest of Telstra;
* Telstra provides equivalent price and non-price terms to its retail business and non-Telstra wholesale customers; and
* this equivalence of treatment is made transparent to the regulator and competitors via strong internal governance structures.
Furthermore, the Government will prohibit the company from gaining any additional spectrum for advanced wireless broadband while:
* remains vertically integrated; and
* owns a hybrid fibre coaxial cable network; and
* maintains its interest in Foxtel.
Discussions will need to be completed by December at the latest, with the Bill set to be voted on in October or November. Which gives us a couple of months of entertainment at least. Let’s just hope the consumer – who Conroy claims will benefit most from this – actually does see the benefit.
[DBCDE]
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Comments
So, realistic, this doesn’t change much, except it know gives telstra another excuse to bill us more.
Unless the government is actually willing to step in and take over the infrastructure side of things, how is this going to help?
I agree, Telstra already charge retail customers more than their wholesale customers charge their retail customers. (That’s a mouth full) So how is this going to change anything at all?
Telstra retail is going to “buy” from Telstra wholesale, so they can justify charging even more!
Wake up… The whole thing is set up… the Gov and the board need this to happen so Telstra can somehow take over the NBN and stuff that up too… This will go down like a cold beer on a hot day… Everything for this NBN is edging towards the gov and Telstra doing it and stuffing it up so they can charge us an arm and a leg, instead of doing it cheap and properly and not charging us for it like they do now with roads and stuff…
$100 says that after all this is over in 15yrs and NBN is up and running T$ will have it’s typical strangle hold on the network & we lose our arms and legs.
Woah kids, this is a good thing.
I don’t understand how anyone could think this opens Telstra up to taking over the NBN?
The law is designed to split up Telstra’s infrastructure from Telstra’s sales and marketing to open up competition. Having a company that acts as a telco that also owns the only infrastructure in the country means that Telstra has a monopoly. By splitting the two up, it means that wholesalers (and therefore customers) will get a better deal because Telstra will have to fight for the use of the infrastructure just like anyone else.
The NBN will be a competing infrastructure.
glad to see someone doing something about the terrible telco industry
so……the people who already have broadband continue to have broadband, and the people without broadband get some inferior service from tel$tra and charged just as much as everyone else….most likely more since tel$tra’s bandwidth charges are some of the most offensive i have ever seen…$40.00 a month for 200MB….GO TEL$TRA!!! If i used this service my monthly bill would be $890.00…thank god for internode…
I work at a Retravision store in SA and we are a Telstra dealer and I’m the only one here who does all the Telstra stuff, phones, contracts and the like.
I don’t charge Telstra’s RRP for anything except prepaid mobiles. If you ring Telstra to do a contract and choose to pay your phone off they will charge you more than if you came in to see me.
I don’t really understand what this will mean for us, can anyone enlighten me?
Basically you’ll still deal with Telstra in the way you always have done. Ideally it will mean that Telstra stuff will be more competitvely priced and supported.
Sooo…. everyone wins then?
^^ hopefully it just means we win. If Telstra wins something out of this then its not working the way it was intended.
The original privatisation should have been set up in this way, except with the telecommunications infrastructure remaning wholely government owned. Cant possibly hope to foster any meaningful competition whilst the largest player is still able to load the dice so significantly in its favour.
Senator Conroy, he’s a d@$&%*#d that should be sacked immediately, for all the damage he’s done and/or doing to our telecommunications industry…
Of course, I’d be happier to see someone break his b@#$%y legs, but that’s just wishful thinking. ;-)
Wow. Talk about misinformation.
I can’t understand why the Big T still has retail customers at all (Pensioners excluded). If anyone had half of one brain cell they would realise that Telstra already has the worst prices on the market, maybe this is the kick up the but that society needs to realise that there is no way to save money with the big T… let alone get a semi-half decent custoemr service response.