Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.
Blog
Technology news and Jobs 
Cornered! Just what do you mean by structural separation?
Cornered! Just what do you mean by structural separation? | Just what do you mean by structural separation? |
|
|
| by Stuart Corner | |
| Thursday, 12 June 2008 | |
|
Page 1 of 4 The main game, however would be ensuring that the owner of 'natural monopoly' infrastructure had no involvement in delivering services carried on that network to end users of any kind: it would deal only with wholesalers who may or may not sell direct to end users. Such an undertaking would take years and be fraught with difficulty and controversy. Nothing on this scale has been attempted since the break up of the old AT&T in the mid 1980s when networks and the services they carried were much simpler. Furthermore, that break-up was done primarily on geographic lines: seven "Baby Bells" were created to offer local services but were barred from offering long distance and international services and the rump of AT&T was barred from offering local services. Neither of the contemporary 'flagship' separations - BT and Telecom NZ - have been game to attempt a corporate fission: both entities remain intact with the same shareholding and the same board of directors responsible for governance in accordance with the respective legislation governing corporate entities. They are in fact examples of operational separation, albeit much more robust than the current operational separation imposed on Telstra. Not that full blown structural separation has not been seriously contemplated in Australia. In December 2002 communications minister Richard Alston ordered the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts to "inquire into and report on the economic and social impact of structurally separating Telstra's core network from its other businesses and reducing the Commonwealth's current shareholding in Telstra's non-network businesses". CONTINUED |
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
