[LINK] Coonan vs Conroy

[David Lochrin]

On Wednesday 03 October 2007 20:10, Danny Yee wrote:
> Roger Clarke wrote:
> > How are you going to force Telstra to pass the national
> > infrastructure into a separate company without paying mega-billions
> > in compensation to them?
>
> This is no problem.  Existing shareholders in Telstra will be given
> shares in both "Australian Internet Infrastructure" and the "new"
> Telstra.  So they won't have lost anything -- they will still own the
> local loop infrastructure -- and no compensation will need to be paid.

   It's both simpler and more complicated than that.

   The Government would need to pass legislation which applies to all providers of "communications infrastructure" (to be defined) without particular reference to Telstra.

   The effect of this legislation would be to regulate the pricing and (let's hope) interworking of communications infrastructure, and separation of that from businesses offering "retail communications services" (to be defined).  Doing this in a way which avoids legal-technical arguments and evolving obsolescence would be a challenge.

   How each organisation deals with the shareholder issues would be up to them.  However I can't see how it would necessarily involve any loss of financial or management control, with responsibility for consequential loss falling on the government. 

David