I would be surprised and amazed, if the OPEL group manage to
supply any kind of credible alternative for country people.

But I do understand why they got it. Whilst the American
amigos might well have finally brought some changes to
Telstra that were long overdue, when it comes to people
skills, they remain ignorant Americans, who are then amazed
when their roughshod tactics don't work outside America.

Peopleskills matter, humans are emotional creatures, ignore
them at your peril. Americans commonly don't understand that.
George W is a classic example.

SingTel is both a shareholder and an industry leader with established partnership agreements in :

Bhart (30.5% India #1 in market, with 23% market share,since 2000)
Telkomsel (35% Indonesia #1 in market with 55% market share,since 2001)
GlobeTelecom (44.5% Phillipines #2 in market with 38% market share,since 1993)
AIS (21.4% Thailand #1 in market with 49% market share,since 1999)
PBTL (45% Bangladesh #4 in market with 5% market share,since 2005)

For Australia to prosper in the future, other than digging up metals and oils and uranium, we need be more involved in areas of technology development around Asia. Being involved in these services gives us a chance to replace the low paid labor jobs going to India and elsewhere with technologically savvy jobs and the education of the technologically savvy.

SingTels move to providing the internet services for rural and remote Australia - in partnership with Elders, will IMHO benefit us in the longer term. The technology will at least be similar perhaps interchangeable, to what is being used and developed in each SingTel partnership country.

Yes I am a shareholder in SingTel and in Telstra.

"Being involved in these services gives us a chance to replace the low paid labor jobs going to India and elsewhere with technologically savvy jobs and the education of the technologically savvy".

This statement is ambiguous.

Does this mean that being involved in these services replaces the movement of jobs off-shore to exploit India and other Asian countries, or does this mean that being involved in these services replaces or gives a promotion of the the off-shore exploitation jobs into technologically more savvy jobs, which, we know, will also be under-paid?

How can moving the business off-shore stop the subcontracts of labour going off-shore? It makes more sense that it just encourages higher levels of business moving off-shore for lower paid middle management positions.

Eventually raising living standards India, China etc will raise wages, but will be a while before there wages are the same level as Australias.

Should we lower our labor costs to the lower standards where the jobs are going to, or do we get smarter at creating new industry were our strengths are built o

We should do things, where we have a comparative advantage. Mining
and farming happen to be things we are good at. There are other
various niche industries, which depend as much on the skills of
the entrepreneurs that drive them as anything.

Wages don't have to drop, but employing people has to be flexible.
If its not, like huge redundancy payments etc, enterprising people
won't risk hiring other people, its not worth the risk.

I can't see how paying money to a Singapore based Telco is going
to increase skills in Australia. Skilled people are already in
short supply here.

What will be interesting is how much of the claims made regarding
rural internet, will turn out to have been spin and what will be
delivered in results. We'll wait and see.