What a crock. Firstly, all Telstra is doing is defending its own interests (certainly not mine) - as every business does or tries to do. Secondly, regulation does work - if it's done well - a big if - but not a rationale for deregulation, which rarely if ever works in the public interest. I had the misfortune of working for government for a short time (far too long). The prevailing orthodoxy was deregulate, eliminate so-called red-tape and allow self regulation (and this in a department that was supposed to protect the environment). Yet no one, when asked, could point to examples where deregulation had actually worked for the public good. And no one was willing to examine the history of deregulation and its patent failures before the next round of regulatory 'efficiency' was undertaken It was almost always a case of deregulate, then don't look at the impacts. Short term business financial gains were painted as success stories - even when the long term social, environmental costs were ignored or taken from the public purse. The free market orthodoxy is a sham and a scam that conflates the interests of profiteers and greed with the interests of the environment, communities and societies.

It is not a question of regulate or not. I am sure that the staunchest advocates of free markets will agree that some regulation is necessary in order to have sufficient stability and security for free markets to operate. The problem is in getting the optimum balance of quality regulations to encourage enterprise and to protect the Commonwealth against over the top exploitation. Good on you Telstra for pushing so hard in one direction, good on you Government in the desire to avoid entrenching monopoly. Hopefully there can be further debate and iterations towards those better balances between free markets and regulation - in telecommunications and in all other commerce. What we need to further the debate are more analyses and evaluations of different attempts at "balance".

If Telstra thinks it has been correct in its strategy, then it will go out of business.

Your article, Mark, overlooks the fact that - whether you like it or not - the great majority of Australians believe that the geography of Australia requires the major communication service provider to take on community service obligations.

A pure free-market response to that is that if the community has such expectations, then it - the community as a whole, through the government - should pay for those obligations, and not the commercial telco, which is trying to maximize its return to shareholders.

At this point, I come to an opposite conclusion to you, Mark. I have a lasting anger at the Howard Government for having INSISTED on privatizing Telstra. In no way has the quality of our service been as good as it was before: Telstra has been distant, unhelpful, arrogant both to consumers and to the elected government. True, the Howard government handled community service expectations very poorly.

I visited Argentina and Chile for the first time in 1988 (and again in 1995, 1996 and 1998). In Chile, the telco had been sold to Alan Bond, and rightly so - the State couldn't provide the capital or technology to provide an acceptable service, and the waiting list for a phone had been up to five years. In Argentina, where the service was still public, trying to make an international call was a Dickensian experience, not to mention expensive. Excellent arguments for privatizing.

But in Australia? None of those arguments applied.

I'm not ideological on privatizations in general - they are good in some cases, but not good in others, like Telstra. What we have had since privatization is a catastrophic diminution of service, a cacophony of would-be providers seeking to "churn" me, frequently calling from Bangalore.

Sol Trujillo represents a pathetic cultural cringe infesting parts of our corporate world. He is a blow-in carpetbagger with no empathy for or commitment to this country. The Rudd Government's showing Telstra the door over the broadband project is a damn good thing.

I think Sol was a lot wiser than you , it's a blinding challenge running a service of that quality to Old galvanized water tanks and Gunyahs and Clearings in the Scrub with aluminum carpets , finding who to send the Account to would be harder than rolling out the service and even harder would getting George Laurens to go bush !

Why people think this service is so wonderful is a mystery to me especially the "Education" BS .
Exactly what Education would a teacher feature ?
The problem is the number of distractions , if you were sitting behind your student eg; 10/10 surveillance then OK it MIGHT help otherwise forget it .
Sometimes I jump them , by the time I sight the screen there is a dynamic maths program running , I know guru's know how thats done , but I an old and wise I know my little darling and his mates 'were' oogling , giggles told me so .
I have had experts who claimed they could enlighten me about the type of crap they were watching , my guy was too smart by half !
My enlightenment came when I downloaded the new Google , low and behold up pops a page of thumbs History , tap 'apexglamour' into google ..........how is your concentration now ?