Rob88,

if you take your view on city folk subsidizing the country then perhaps we should not build country roads as most of these are paid for by state taxes contributed by city dwellers, nor railroads as state funds cover these as well.

Perhaps we can close off the major cities and then Telstra can save a bucketload as well as state governments.

Problem is the cows, sheep and farm produce will have to walk! ;)

BTW I live in the inner city of Sydney and have no friends, relatives etc living in the rural areas of Australia! Nor do I belong/support the Nats, Greens or Labor, however, I think telco facilities are an essential part of infrastructure and critical infrastructure should NEVER be owned by private enterprise. I realize and accept that we have Vodafone et al but Telstra owns all of the copper; this may be irrelevant for the city as mobile cells have become ubiquitous!

As an example of how serious privatisation can be, the US government wants to consolidate information on major assets such as power supply, gas distribution etc as part of its emergnecy response planning. Guess what, private enterprise own nearly all of these assets and are resisting "big time" on providing the essential data on this infrastructure. They somehow see it conflicts with their profit/competitive goals! Damn terrorist/natural disasters and the sad part is that the US can not legally enforce compliance.

Bens comments re the sale of Telstra provide interesing reading, I,m with Geof and Peter, as are about 80% of Australians, Telecomunications as with power are essential sevices. it would be fine if we all lived inside the city boundary, or perhaps on a isle like say England where current technology can easily cover and profitably. In WA mobiles are only avail on main highways or around large population bases...where else would you expect, they pay? Same over most of our Nation OZ. Bad accident, country road, no phone, no ambo or hostpital either I suppose, no schools? I'm discusted,.. at johns lies as well.

Idiology has driven public policy for some time, since Whitlam we have progressed down the same path, Rob 88, Crockodile, Numbat and plerdsus...you have to kidding!! and you want to be fed.

I thought we may have at last found a real oposition...but alas it just took a couple billion and Barney bailed.

Nev.

Nev is right about mobile phone usage, but forget WA, take a drive down the Hume Highway and 2 kms south of Bowral there is no Telstra coverage until you drive into Goulburn. This has nothing to do with rural Oz as business people need to travel backward and forward on this major highway.

Like it or not our economic future is squarely in the domain of fast, reliable, affordable and ubiquitous telecommunications.

Alas, as they say "we get the politicians we deserve" I am not sure I did anything to deserve our current batch of Libs, Labs etc. They stand for nothing but self interest and blind ambition. (Oops must not get too far off the current topic!)

The worst thing is that there is no rational opposition party responses to the Telstra sell off - there are so many flaws in the arguments for its sale but all we get is the 10 second sound bite of Kim being outraged! That's it!

Thanks Ben Rees for a useful article.

It is astonishing that the Government has turned logic and reason inside out in order to avoid using the most blindingly obvious means, which it has at its disposal, to fix problems with our telecommunications system, particularly for rural users, that is to use its majority control of Telstra to simply direct Telstra to serve the public and rural users.

Privatisation will inevitably cause money which could be used to fix our telecommunications services to be diverted into the hands of stock brokers, investors, fincancial advisers, accountants, bankers, regulatory red tape and general paper shuffling.

People may be interested to read other discussion on Telstra here :

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3737

(The debate on welfare 'reform' advocate Peter Saunders' article "Defining Poverty" got a little bit off track, but I would plead that it was not primarily my doing.)

Other on line forums include :

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/20/dont-minchin-it/

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/06/telstra-yet-again/

Most importantly, if anyone wants to help us stop the Government selling without your consent, what is, after all, YOUR property (and not Howard's, Costello's, Minchin's, Coonan's or Trujillo's), please get in touch with us through

http://www.citizensagainstsellingtelstra.com .

Essential services should never have been placed in the hands of private industry. I concluded that back in the 80's and have not observed any evidence thus far to change my opinion. As Ben Rees says there is no valid reason for the sale of Telstra apart from ideology.

Assuming that regulations are put in place to protect communications in rural areas (which in and of itself invalidates privatisation), just how long are these 'regulations' guaranteed to last? For perpetuity? Somehow I doubt that. Times change and so do regulations. The demand for continually rising profits will be the ultimate determinate of how well the rural sector is considered.

Peter King
I am not opposed to the government providing essential services but we we should have priorities. Open up your map of Australia; it's a big place. Are we going to provide mobile coverage for all or provide better health and education?

I would like country people to have good broadband but not at the expense of destroying Telstra or draining the Treasury.

The telecommunications industry needs an environment that promotes
investment and encourages competition. Telstra under government control has a poor record of investment. It paid out more than 100% of its profits to shareholders last year. This was a board decision and guess who controls it. The government will collect $5.25bn in dividends, company tax and shareholder tax receipts from Telstra. Most large public companies retain 20 to 50% of their profits for investment and growth but Telstra is a government cash cow, not a growth engine. Typically, in areas of population growth, the supermarket will be built before the broadband. Private companies will invest in supermarkets years before Telstra gets around to upgrading the phones.

I can understand the annoyance of people relying on Telstra to fix their phones but government ownership and USO is the problem not the solution.

When Telstra service was unsatisfactory on my phone I switched to Optus; the quality improved and the cost plummetted. Telecommunications technology is changing rapidly, particularly wireless. Small towns that were uneconomic in ADSL will become a commercial proposition with wireless. It is essential that more operators get into the market and investment is profitable. Competion and lower prices will follow.

Obviously there are areas that are uneconomic for wireless and perhaps a subsidy is justified, but before we hand out public money we should look at the income and assets of the recipient. Maybe they should pay more.

Your analogy with country roads is invalid. The roads are there for all to use but the phone connection is private. There are plenty of main roads in outback areas that are impassable after 5mm of rain. The people living their might prefer sealed roads instead of broadband.