Stan Beer
Wednesday, 11 March 2009 14:34
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
The departure of Sol Trujillo from Telstra will pave the way for
structural separation of the carrier and the NBN is dead in the water
says the Australian boss of Telecom NZ's giant services subsidiary
Gen-i. What's more, regulation will continue to play a big role in the
newly separated Telstra.
Phil Varney, a former BT vice president and now
the general manager of the Australian office of Gen-i, a structually
separated ICT services supplier with 3500 employees and NZ$1.6 billion
annual revenues, says that Trujillo's departure will create a "vacuum"
that will inevitably lead to structural separation.
"It is very similar to the situation we had in New Zealand when (former
Telecom NZ CEO) Theresa Gattung was butting heads with the Government,"
Varney told iTWire.
"After Theresa left that paved the way for the inevitable structural separation that happened under the new CEO Paul Reynolds.
"Now that Sol Trujillo is leaving, a similar vacuum will be created at
Telstra which could well end up with the new CEO leading Telstra toward
structural separation."
Of course this is not the first time that Varney has spoken about
forcing Telstra to structurally separate its wholesale and retail
businesses. Earlier this year, he called for the forced separation of
the wholesale and retail businesses of both Telstra and Optus to give
smaller players like Gen-i a chance to compete.
However, Varney does speak from a position of experience. He was a vice
president at BT during its period of structural separation, before
joining the Telecom NZ fold and being on board during the structural
separation of retail businesses like Gen-i.
"We are functionally separated. Gen-i is a standalone retail business.
We're going through that process now; the accounting processes are all
maturing and what an exercise that's been," says Varney.
"It's been a long time coming and it's obviously been a testing time
for the business. However, it's making good progress and Paul Reynolds
has got a lot of experience of these sorts of environments working at
BT in the UK. It's working well."
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