Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Telstra is taking out full page adverts in country newspapers and planning letterbox drops to counter what is says is false information (and free publicity for the Optus Elders joint venture) contained in a letter about broadband sent to a large number of rural residents by communications minister Helen Coonan.
The advert takes the form of an open letter to country Australians. In it Telstra says the minister has made "a deliberate attempt to weaken [Telstra] and undermine its investments in regional Australia."
In the letter Coonan says: "Data from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has shown that to date, your street address has not received a commercial upgrade to enable access to ADSL or wireless broadband." She provides no qualification as to what type of 'wireless broadband' she is referring to, and even if Telstra's claims of greater than 98 percent coverage for Next G are exaggerated, it is highly likely that many of these residents would be able to get Next G wireless broadband, albeit at price higher than ADSL services.
In its advert, Telstra says: "feedback we have received clearly shows many recipients of the letter can already access ADSL broadband or wireless broadband via Telstra’s Next G network, or in some cases both. In some instances the letter was even sent to people who already have ADSL from exchanges that were upgraded with taxpayers’ money; something the minister should already have known."
Telstra says it believes that about 500,000 letters have been sent, but the minister has not responded to its requests for more information about how many letters had been sent and where they were distributed.
The minister's letter continues with free publicity for Opel: "The roll-out of the new national high speed network is starting shortly and your address is likely to benefit from the new broadband service...Opel, a joint venture between Optus and Elders, was the successful bidder in the Government's competitive process to build the network...and will begin to reach many Australian homes and businesses in coming months, with roll-out to be completed in full by mid-2009."
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
