[LINK] Telstra - taking its ball and going home.

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

Quickly on the USO.

http://www.dcita.gov.au/tel/fixed_telephone_services/industry_issues/the_universal_service_obligation_uso#1

> We could debate whether telcos pay for the USO over and above their 
> license fees or whether the USO comes out of the license fees and 
> taxes the government collects.

The USO is already funded from carrier license revenue. The license is 
calculated on (a) the raw license fee, and (b) an "eligible revenue 
assessment", which applies to all carriers and is used to calculate how 
much they're charged as their USO contribution.

The revenue assessments are published on the ACMA website.

> The government would seek tenders and fund the delivery of non 
> commercially viable areas or maybe each telco would be allocated a few 
> regions to deliver services, if the residents/constituents aren't 
> happy they can take it up with their MPs....


Tendering was tried and failed, IIRC ... from DCITA: "due to the lack of 
interest shown in the pilot areas, there was little value in continuing 
the pilots beyond their end date of June 2004."

RC

Marghanita da Cruz wrote:

> Frank,
>
> Putting  it most simply...should the mum and dad shareholders of 
> Telstra forego their dividend to pay for telecommunications in the 
> country?
>
> My own view, is that the sooner the USO is separated from Telstra the 
> better.
>
> We could debate whether telcos pay for the USO over and above their 
> license fees or whether the USO comes out of the license fees and 
> taxes the government collects.
>
> The government would seek tenders and fund the delivery of non 
> commercially viable areas or maybe each telco would be allocated a few 
> regions to deliver services, if the residents/constituents aren't 
> happy they can take it up with their MPs....
>
> Any comments on this program?
> <http://www.dcita.gov.au/tel/broadband_connect>
>
> Marghanita
>
> Frank O'Connor wrote:
>
>> The government was planning to make $2-3 billion available as part of 
>> their ploy for appeasing the Nationals on the Telstra sale ... which 
>> presumably would have gone into the infrastructuring of remote 
>> non-urban areas that Telstra would have considered uneconomic.
>>
>> Now ... $2-3 billion buys an awful lot of fibre to the town (most of 
>> which is already there in Victoria and NSW) and Satellite and 
>> Wireless and other means to the farm. Telstra was of the opinion this 
>> was insufficient ... so maybe they could let us know what would be 
>> sufficient.
>>
>> The bottom line I suppose is that Telstra wants nothing to do with 
>> the bush, the government relies on the bush for votes and seats, and 
>> in any event the bush deserves some consideration viz-a-viz 
>> telecommunications.
>>
>> None of the above of course excuses Telstra for its 20-30 years of 
>> neglect of the network. They had the right idea in the late 70's ... 
>> "lets lay fibre" ... but they never took it to its proper conclusion. 
>> (Perhaps because the governments of the time were more interested in 
>> their annual multi-billion dollar dividend than providing network 
>> infrastructure, and since the privatisation this mind-set didn't 
>> change. As I said in an earlier post ... bean counters run Telstra.)
>>
>> Net result: A dinosaur has more prospects of survival than an 
>> increasingly obsolete Telstra. They're way slow on the wholesale end, 
>> still have to get to grips with the 'client satisfaction' and 
>> 'service' and 'value' things on the retail end, and unless Sol really 
>> pulls a rabbit out of the hat tomorrow ... are bereft of ideas, plans 
>> and strategies for the future.
>>
>>                             Regards,
>>
>> At 12:08 PM +1000 9/8/06, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
>>
>>> Howard Lowndes wrote:
>>>
>>>> ...and once again the rural/regionals have to wait.  I have 2 
>>>> clients whose circuits have only just been upgraded (or perhaps the 
>>>> dBA standards threshold has been downgraded) enough to enable 
>>>> vanilla DSL.
>>>>
>>>> In fact one rural customer has 10 lines into their premises and 
>>>> only 1 came up to snuff, the other were either RIMs or just plain 
>>>> too noisy.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ...so whose responsibility is this and how should this 
>>> infrastructure be funded...there was a snippet about Telstra 
>>> agreeing to do the rural stuff if the other telcos paid for it, 
>>> presumeably through the USO.
>>>
>>> Marghanita
>>> -- 
>>> Marghanita da Cruz
>>> Ramin Communications
>>> http://www.ramin.com.au
>>> Phone: 0414-869202
>>> Email: marghanita at ramin.com.au
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Link mailing list
>>> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
>>> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>>
>>
>>
>
>