Telstra pulls out of broadband conference alleging panel bias

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 04 November 2008 04:55

IT Industry - Strategy

Budde told iTWire "I called [Telstra Wholesale GMD] Kate McKenzie, who I know quite well but she refused to take my calls." Forman accused Telstra of leaving its decision to the last minute so as to embarrass the conference organisers.

"Telstra could have declined the invitation to appear at the conference, or it could have made its attendance conditional on who was on the panel when it was first invited. It has known for months that the NBN process was on going and who else was speaking at the event.

(The original deadline for NBN RFP responses was 25 July, the minister in May cancelled this and left it open ended saying it would be 12 weeks from network information becoming available. Then on 3 September set the 26 November deadline)

Forman added: "B waiting until the last few days before the conference to make its demands for others to be dumped, Telstra was acting as nothing more or less than a bully. Clearly, it knows that the independent commercial conference organisers have sold sponsorship and tickets on the basis that Telstra was on the program."

And in what seems hardly to be a coincidence, within minutes of the CCC revealing Telstra's withdrawal from the conference, Telstra announced that it and Microsoft would hold a press conference to "make a joint announcement about the future of [our]  business communications services in Australia" conflicting with the showcase and its immediately following panel session.

iTWire attempted to obtain comment from Telstra, but was unable to do so at the time of writing.

Following Telstra's withdrawal, Pozoglou said that independent consultant David Havyatt had agreed to present the Telstra position in both the showcase and the panel discussion. "David is intimately familiar with Telstra position on this and he will be putting that position as best he can." 

He added that the originally scheduled Terria spokesman for the showcase, CEO Michael Simmons, would be replaced by Optus' director of government and corporate affairs, Maha Krishnapillai. (This will give Telstra additional ammunition for its claims that Terria is nothing more than a front for Optus.)

Havyatt, a former head of regulatory affairs and AAPT and currently holding a similar post at Unwired, stressed that he would be appearing entirely as an independent consultant. "It's really a matter of taking a position in a debate, its' not that hard to do."

Pozoglou said that Telstra had not withdrawn any delegates from the conference, many of whom had in any case been invited by conference sponsors. "We also have the metro Ethernet Form having heir first workshop as part of the conference and a couple of Telstra people are speaking at that."