Stuart Corner
Thursday, 22 May 2008 07:53
Opinion and Analysis
Page 4 of 5
The result was that the regime put in place on 1 July 1989 lasted just two years with the government, in effect, being forced to give away a second fixed and cellular licence as the price for finding someone willing to bail it out of the $800 million black hole that Aussat had become.
Whatever the uncertainties surrounding Aussat, the 1989 regime had clearly given the industry as a whole an enormous boost in confidence. The exhibition scheduled to take place alongside The Australian Telecommunications User Group's 1990 annual conference the following year was booked out months in advance even with floor space increased by 40 percent over the 1989 event.
But by the end of 1989 resolution of the Aussat 'problem' was becoming urgent and Transport and Communications Minister, Ralph Willis, announced that the review of the relationship between Australia's three state-owned carriers was to be brought forward and would be carried out early in the New Year. Thus was launched what became known as the Review of Structural Arrangements, better known to all who were involved as ROSA.
That led to Aussat being sold off with a licence to compete against Telstra in all facets of its operation and to the introduction of a third cellular operator.
One lesson from those first moves to deregulation that was not well learnt and which has bedevilled the industry ever since is that any attempt to rein in the power of the monopoly will be resisted fiercely, consume enormous regulatory resources and generate much anguish among competitors.
The 1988 reforms created the concept of a value added service and permitted the monopoly carriers Telecom and OTC to compete with the private sector in the full gamut of these services, as well as supplying the essential underlying carriage services.
Telecom signalled its intent to compete aggressively in the value added services market with the formation of Telecom Plus which drew together the numerous discrete value added services and facilities offered by Telecom into one unit.
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