Praise all round (almost) for Government's new telecoms strategy

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 07 April 2009 11:03

IT Industry - Strategy

Let's not call it a national broadband strategy any more because the regulatory changes envisaged by the Government's announcements this morning will change the telecoms landscape in Australia irrevocably, and many participants believe these changes will be very much for the better.

Even Telstra welcomed this morning's announcement by the Government, but significantly Telstra focussed on the opportunities to be created by the proposed $43b investment over eight years to take FTTP to 90 percent of Australians and 12Mbps via other means to the rest.

Telstra largely ignored the related announcement of plans for major regulatory reform which are likely to transform Telstra dramatically over the next few years through the functional separation it has so vehemently opposed under the four year reign of CEO Sol Trujillo and his 'amigos', most notably COO Greg Winn.

Telstra chairman, Donald McGauchie, said: "We look forward to having constructive discussions with the Government at the earliest opportunity...Telstra has publicly advanced the need for high-speed broadband for a number of years and shares the Government's strong desire to make high-speed broadband widely available to all Australians as a key enabler of economic growth and social development."

On the prospect of Telstra facing draconian new regulation, McGauchie said: "Senator Conroy has said today that the Government does not have a pre-determined view on regulatory matters. Telstra welcomes the opportunity to provide input on the regulatory reform discussion paper."

Other commentators, some unwilling to go on the record, expressed the view that today's outcome was the culmination of years of Telstra playing hardball with the Government and the regulatory, and had it accepted the inevitability of change the outcome could have been very different.

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