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.
So what has changed? At some stage since being elected the new communications minister, Stephen Conroy, has written to Trujillo to remind him of the repeated assurances given by Samuel that he sees no reason to regulate access to Telstra's ADSL2+ services and, in light of this, asking Telstra to turn them on ASAP. In closing his letter Conroy notes that he can only remind Trujillo of what Samuel has said, and that the decision to regulate or not remains solely with the ACCC.
I know this because Conroy has released a copy of the letter he sent to Trujillo. A sure sign, I would suggest, that he is not at all happy with the way Telstra has misrepresented the situation.
So why has Telstra done this? Certainly the animosity towards Samuel is powerful. Denying the very existence of the ACCC's roles and responsibilities in regulating access to telecommunication services is one way of giving vent to that animosity.
More likely is that, by trying to make out that the provision of high speed broadband to millions of people many months later than was technically possible (in many cases the equipment was installed and services can be turned on immediately) was the result of Government decision Telstra is seeking to cover up the real reason: its own recalcitrance.
When he came on board in mid 2005 Trujillo succeeded very quickly in souring relations between Telstra and the incumbent government. Looks like he is determined to repeat the process with the new Government; and make relations with the ACCC and Graeme Samuel even worse than they already are, if that's possible.
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.
