I agree. The only thing I think is that the lead-ins as well as the fibres running in the streets (but not even really those in the road, for the most part), the passive infrastructure components only should be in public ownership. Think water or electricity. except it'll be private further than about a few hundred metres away from the average premises.
But the coalition privatised Telstra in 1997 without any structural separation whatsoever. That was at a time where Telstra was overbuilding its competitor's HFC network to 85% instead of the 20% previously expected by Keating-era Labor.
And Telstra was pretty much the only telco in the world that was privatised and allowed to keep both its HFC and copper networks. In Germany, the EU stepped in and forced a sell-off of Deutsche Telekom's HFC operations.
But in Australia, the coalition's obsession with privatisation to make the "surplus" look as big as possible has lead to an absolute fiasco. One where seven years later the copper network was described as "five minutes to midnight" and now ten years after that in turn, we're paying money to rent it back.
Absolute insanity - what the hell kind of government would buy or rent a copper network and invest dozens of billions into it that its current owner said was five minutes to midnight ten years ago.
I agree with the private market aspect - except for aspects of the passive infrastructure. But the government here created a shit-heap of a problem that only the government has the ability to fix.
But now they're just going to make it all worse - thanks, once again, primarily because of the coalition. But Labor's not blameless either, by a long stretch.
I agree. The only thing I think is that the lead-ins as well as the fibres running in the streets (but not even really those in the road, for the most part), the passive infrastructure components only should be in public ownership. Think water or electricity. except it'll be private further than about a few hundred metres away from the average premises.
But the coalition privatised Telstra in 1997 without any structural separation whatsoever. That was at a time where Telstra was overbuilding its competitor's HFC network to 85% instead of the 20% previously expected by Keating-era Labor.
And Telstra was pretty much the only telco in the world that was privatised and allowed to keep both its HFC and copper networks. In Germany, the EU stepped in and forced a sell-off of Deutsche Telekom's HFC operations.
But in Australia, the coalition's obsession with privatisation to make the "surplus" look as big as possible has lead to an absolute fiasco. One where seven years later the copper network was described as "five minutes to midnight" and now ten years after that in turn, we're paying money to rent it back.
Absolute insanity - what the hell kind of government would buy or rent a copper network and invest dozens of billions into it that its current owner said was five minutes to midnight ten years ago.
I agree with the private market aspect - except for aspects of the passive infrastructure. But the government here created a shit-heap of a problem that only the government has the ability to fix.
But now they're just going to make it all worse - thanks, once again, primarily because of the coalition. But Labor's not blameless either, by a long stretch.