Telstra wins court case to access ‘secret’ OPEL documents

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Thursday, 14 February 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! Telstra has won a court case to access so-called ‘secret documents’ which would potentially outline why Telstra lost a bid for AUD $600m in Government funding to build a rural and regional broadband network. When the Optus/Elders ‘OPEL’ consortium won the previous Australia Federal Government’s ‘Broadband Connect’ program to fund a rural and regional broadband network, Australia’s dominant telco, Telstra, completely blew its top in protest. Telstra decided to sue to get access to the documents because the previous Australian Federal Government, which was in a long running battle with Telstra, had only publicly announced that AUD $600 million in funding would be available, so when it was announced this had been nearly doubled to almost $1b, without any other telco knowing the extra funds were available, Telstra went absolutely ballistic. To cheekily paraphrase their response at the time, it was a bit like “Why weren’t we told this extra money was available? See you all in court!!”. And that’s exactly what Telstra did, with one mini snag: Telstra’s original court case saw them lose, denied access to the ‘secret documents’ that Telstra was sure would uncover all kinds of skulduggery cloak and dagger. But lawyers are never ones to worry about a defeat in court, because there’s always the opportunity to appeal: and that’s exactly what Telstra did. And guess what? Telstra won this round, and you can bet they’re very, very happy. Telstra said in a statement that: “The Full Bench of the Federal Court of Appeal today allowed Telstra's appeal and overturned the earlier judgment by Justice Graham. This means the Government will now provide Telstra with the documents it has been asking for since August last year”. Telstra are characterising this as a win for rural Australians, saying that they may well be a “step closer to discovering why the previous Government secretly changed a bid process which gave nearly a $1 billion to the OPEL consortium for broadband services it still hasn't delivered, nearly eight months later”. But I’m not really sure if rural Australians are interested in what was in those documents, for someone at least was going to provide some real competition to Telstra in rural and regional Australia. What I am sure of, however, is that Telstra themselves dearly want to know – and soon, they will. So, what have Telstra’s representatives had to say about their court win? Please read onto page 2. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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