[polemic]

Yup - in NZ the infrastrucutre and the provider were separated as part of the nation-wide fibre-to-the-door rollout.

I switched provider the other week, after the old one discontinued a discount. All I had to do was sign up with the new provider and provide the connection number. They organised everything else and my old provider _refunded_ me for part of an unused pro-rata month.

Suspicously easy.

[BLKNSLVR]

Yeah, the Australian Government was never going to structurally separate Telstra because it would have trashed the share price, which would have made them look bad because they were the ones that sold it off to create the Future Fund (public sector pension fund, sort-of).

Telstra's behaviour post-privatisation somewhat precipitated the creation of NBNco.

[hilbert42]

"structurally separate Telstra because it would have trashed the share price,"

I've whinged for years about the fact that Australia is the world's expert in fucking up communications services and it has done so for nearly a century, and it's cost the Australian public many billions of dollars (for some reason Oz people are like sheep, unfortunately they let governments and Big Business walk all over them and don't complain).

I even challenged HN readers to come up with a country that made a worse mess of its communications and I've had no takers!

It's not only the sale of Telstra that governments of both persuasions have fucked up, one only needs to see a litany of disasters with the NBN, and just wait until it's divided up among unscrupulous money-grubbing telcos, the Telstra sale will begin to look benign in comparison.

What are my reasons you may well ask. I've said them all previously on HN and elsewhere, the latest only a week or so ago, it's here if you're interested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=42104578

[ThePowerOfFuet]

>I even challenged HN readers to come up with a country that made a worse mess of its communications and I've had no takers!

Canada.

[hilbert42]

OK. Reasons, instances?

I rather like my views being changed by good arguments/new facts. :-)

[BLKNSLVR]

Great vestiges of the British Empire both. Kowtowing to the modern version of the aristocracy. The more things change the more they stay the same.

[hilbert42]

And I agree, but it's also complex socioeconomic problem. That's not to say they're not interrelated because they are. Of course, the devil's in the detail—coupling factor(s), etc. (See my rather late reply to protocolture. Often by the time I bother to check replies the story is long dead). :-)

[rasz]

Sounds as easy as switching phone providers in Poland.