Optus CEO hoes in to Telstra

Stuart Corner
Friday, 02 December 2005 08:51

IT Policy - Regulation

Optus CEO Paul O'sullivan has delivered, in a luncheon address, an unrelenting attack on Telstra's claims for regulatory relief.

Addressing an audience of several hundred business executives at the Trans-Tasman Business Circle lunch, O'Sullivan said that Australia was facing a 'moment of truth' in telecommunications, and that "Telstra is trying to use this moment of truth to rebuild its monopoly for the new millennium."

Pivotal to this moment of truth was "high quality, ubiquitously available broadband," O'Sullivan said.

"Our economic future depends on the knowledge industries ...and other service industries. In turn, these industries rely on rapidly moving vast quantities of information. Quite simply, in geographic areas where you cannot get adequate broadband access, you cannot do business. The quality of the broadband grid today is as critical to a nation's economic development as the electricity grid was 150 years ago."

O'Sullivan called for "a model in which the industry as a whole shares in the investment necessary to upgrade Australia's national broadband infrastructure" and one which "would let each party reach certainty - through contractual negotiations rather than the heavy hand of Government - about the terms on which one party could use the part of the network built by another party."

He said that Optus had "publicly, and privately, made this offer to Telstra." But that Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo, had written back on 17 October 2005, saying "...we have no plans to proceed with a national fibre to the node." That was less than a month before it announced plans for just such a network.

O'Sullivan claimed: " Optus is completely serious about this proposition. We are ready to talk."