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by elementalest
3154 days ago
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When the Liberals privatised the government owned monopoly telco (now called Tesltra), they didn't properly structurally seperate it in the first place. The government, like NZ, could have gotten the wholesale part of Telstra to start upgrading network infrastructure. If they had done it properly the first time, we wouldn't be in this mess. |
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They couldn't, though, without a lot more difficulty.
You're missing the context that at the time of Rudd's election and the NBN design/build plan, Telstra was actively hostile towards the government. Solomon Trujillo was the CEO at the time, and actively fought against any suggestion that Telstra might be structurally separated (a-la Telecom NZ's split into Chorus and Spark), or be required to build a nationwide wholesale fibre network.
Telstra under Trujillo was the company that famously gave a last minute 13-page (non-compliant) response[1] to a call for bids to build the NBN, that was effectively a giant middle finger to the government.
Forcing a structural separation when the government own a minority stake in the company[2] would've required either re-purchasing it at market rates, or some kind of legislative change, and thus opening the government up to a shareholder lawsuit. At the time, the CAN and Fibre back-haul networks were considered some of Telstra's greatest assets, those would've been some major purchases.
There were a bunch of bad options, but having been backed into this corner by previous government decisions - there wasn't a whole lot they could've done.
[1] https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/270911/telstra_bann...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra#Privatisation