Telstra NBN day of reckoning beckoning at high noon

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 18 October 2011 07:01

IT Policy - Regulation

Today at noon the long suffering shareholders of Australia's dominant carrier Telstra will take the most important vote in the company's history since it was privatised. The question will be whether they want to accept $11 billion from the government in exchange for selling off the company's fixed line copper network.

 

Most pundits believe that the vote will pass, leading to the point of no return on the path to structural separation for Telstra and the forging ahead of the fibre based government owned National Broadband Network.

Pundits believe that the prospect of mum and dada shareholders receiving a substantial share of the $11 billion plus an end to the uncertainty that has existed in the market surrounding Telstra's future will be more than enough to put most of the ticks in the aye box.

Once the deal is passed, however, it will be far from plain sailing for Telstra, which is still locking horns with the ACCC over a number of issues concerning the impending structural separation.

Post separation, Telstra will still easily be the leading, although not dominant, mobile carrier and cable TV provider for some years to come until the HFC network is forcibly shut down.

Although Telstra CEO David Thodey has signalled publicly that there are no firm plans afoot to reinvest the $11 billion payout, it is hard to imagine that the carrier will not use at least part of the funds to further accelerate the build out of its LTE mobile network footprint, which went live in September.

The Telstra vote will be webcast live here.