Rob88,

Perhaps, before we discuss whether or not we should subsidise rural telecommunications users, we should first decide as a community, whether or not we should be subsidising the finance sector. The reported cost of $500 million to sell Telstra is on the beginning of the story (see :
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,16351874%255E911,00.html)

We are also paying, as a community, for much of the red tape, which is necessary to set up a contrived environment of competition, not to mention all the idiotic duplication of infrastructure. Examples include the five different digital mobile phone networks covering the same geographic area in the major cities and the duplicated rollout of optical fibre cabel performed by Telstra and Optus in the 1990's. Who do you think must ultimately pay the cost of all of this?

If we had simply maintained public ownership of the natural monopoly of telecommunications and had run Telstra to meet the needs of Australians, rather than under its inappropriate corporate charter, introduced in 1989, we could have easily met the needs of rural telecommunications users with the money saved.

Just finally, I would like to put in a plug for another online discussion over Telstra, here :

http://edcrain.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2

People need to realise the speed at which communications technology is changing, and the fact that we have to go along with the changes in order to remain internationally competitive. Wireless internet has the potential to gut the current mobile phone providers in very short order, just as fast as wired broadband is gutting fixed line services. The reason Telstra should be sold as fast as possible is to get some return for the assets while there are still mugs (sorry, investors) who are willing to buy it. The future for remote communications, both phone, data, internet and mobile, will be satellite broadband, which will be accessible throughout the world, and will require NO maintenance staff to be stationed in rural areas. The resulting social changes will be very dislocating, but cannot be avoided. Any attempt to resist these changes will be futile (know any morse code operators?). Any subsidies or special treatment will only be useful to ease the transition to the new order. Remember Tim Berners-Lee's comment last month "People should realise that we are just at the very beginning of the technological revolution".

How on earth does the speed of technological change justify selling off an essential public utility? If anything the possibilities of new technology should be kept away from those with only a profit motive. Can't believe that this is the best that plerdsus can present for an argument. Try again.

Hear hear, Trinity.

>>How on earth does the speed of technological change justify selling off an essential public utility? If anything the possibilities of new technology should be kept away from those with only a profit motive.<<

The US example of 911 (emergency) calls and the VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service providers should ring alarm bells here.

Here's a quick summary of the problem, courtesy of CNET:

"Because of a range of technical and other problems, VoIP 911 calls are often unreliable. After-hours calls in particular may be misdirected to emergency-services administrative offices, where a recorded message explains that the offices are closed and that callers should dial 911 if there's an emergency. What's more, VoIP 911 calls that do reach dispatchers often aren't accompanied by the caller's phone number and location."

Once a service is conducted purely for profit, i.e. placed in the hands of commercial organizations, the inclination to dispense with non-revenue-earning components comes into play. And 911 has traditionally been cost-free to the caller, representing no revenue to the provider. Unfortunately, the technology that enables the VOIP company to identify the sorce of the emergency call, and route it to the closest centre, is an additional cost. Should this be passed straight on to the consumer, or should the government shoulder some of the responsibility, and cost?

If I were the provider, I would charge the government through the nose for adding "proper" 911 routing to my service. After all, what is more valuable than helping save lives? Not only that, but I owe it to my shareholders to maximise every revenue source available to me.

Although I predicted the full sale of Telstra would probably proceed based on Barnaby Joyce’s slush fund for the bush and that fund by itself would not guarantee quality of service by itself the issue has moved on now the Nationals have accepted this loose deal as their best chance of obtaining a sweetener.

I implore other Senators from the bush to get their hands in the bucket right away otherwise that slush fund will just gush out in one direction. Also the only guarantee that service can be delivered still depends as always more on the maintenance of in house skills than any new technology (from a recent letter).

This relates directly to who runs the backbone after Telstra is sold.

Experts can set up many components to have a deliberately exploitable use by date. Government agencies everywhere fall into that common trap and only long term ownership such as we had avoids that.

But we have a new situation where sooner not later the government and the public have lost control of their giant communications backbone. Let’s imagine for a moment it was the entire Australian transport system; our main roads, streets and superhighways as well as railways and ports all suddenly have to make money for the new shareholders. Odd bits everywhere would inevitably be discarded.

The size of the body of practical people left in the telecommunications industry is more critical than ever. We can guarantee some long term service delivery by demanding each part of the industry has to maintain skills and educate to the level necessary for local research and development. That means new partnerships freely offered to other institutions in all regions. States once did that in extracting mineral resources through their School of Mines.

This is more about reading between the lines and we can do it again.

Recall Victoria once had a powerful SECV Tasmania likewise its HEC, Victorians also had its MMBW minding a vast network of water and sewage systems. All were industry leaders in their time and much of their technology became the standard in other states

Privatisation is not simply about selling off public assets. It's about whether we, as a national community, have a right to run our own telecommunications service to meet our needs or whether we must, instead, depend upon one or more private corporation to do it for us. Regardless of what technologies are used we should insist on our right as a community to be able to own and control the means to be able to provide telecommunications services through our parliamentary institutions.

It defies all reason to imagine that plerdsus has knowledge of the pace of the development of technology that is not also apparent to most prospective investors. How can he expect that, if there is any validity to his claim, that this can escape the notice of prospective investors over the coming months, and the value won't drop close to zero? I predict that the price won't drop to zero, although they may have trouble in achieving the $5.25 target price.

Whatever price is paid we will all be screwed in more ways than one. The investors will try to get, from our pockets, what they consider a good return on their investment, whilst the Government can be expected to squander the money on either pork barreling, or the "Future Fund" which will be of little to anybody but the appointed fund managers.

To change the topic a little, some of you might find this article about Sol Trujillo from Dissent magazine to be of interest :

http://www.citizensagainstsellingtelstra.com/resources/2/dissent-trujillo-aug05.html