[LINK] Keep or sell or ditch, when faced by definite loss of monopoly of resources

[Phillip Musumeci]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 2:35 PM, David Boxall <
david.boxall at hunterlink.net.au> wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 at 00:00:04 +1000 Phillip Musumeci wrote:
>
> I don't know if it will be possible for the NBN to do deals with willing
>> sellers of existing high bandwidth elements
>>
> From: <
> http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/KGB-INTERROGATION-Stephen-Conroy-pd20090409-QWVYH?OpenDocument&src=srch
> >
>
>> [Conroy] ... the final cost of the network will be dependent on the
>> discussions that will take place between ourselves and Telstra, and
>> ourselves and Optus, and ourselves and Nextgen, and ourselves and TransAct,
>> and ourselves and AAPT and ourselves and Optus, and anyone else who wants to
>> have discussion with us about whether they’d like to invest in the NBN. Now,
>> what I mean by invest is for an equity contribution from us, they may not
>> want to roll their fibre assets into the network.
>>
> The government, it seems, is willing to consider "fibre assets" in lieu of
> financial contributions to the NBN.
>

Yes - good news.  The govt. has had to wear some political flack regarding
how expensive the proposal appears (actually, SC possibly had less flack
this week!).  I reckon an initial cost overestimate is the preferred
starting point as it might help the govt. negotiate good value for any asset
being accepted in a swap.  They might yet get a reward like lower final
price or more govt. equity preserved (which can be sold even before a
company is spun out).

The interview didn't mention share holding limits.  With a 15% cap on NBN
share holdings, I'd like to hope that any (partial) vertical integration
still yields at least 100/15 => 7 or so players for a dynamic retail
marketplace.   Thankfully, a spun out NBN will be regulated with the
residual monopoly minimalist, "natural", etc.

The interview mentions Telstra HFC used by Foxtel, which raises Murdock and
News Corp analysis of the future of cable/satellite TV.  News is already
testing the water with social web sites that build communities.  The point
to point architecture of FTTP gives us a very flexible TV - we can
"multicast" everything like the current system, or multicast the programs
and have personalised "smart" ads (like say the google gmail interface I'm
using, or smart location-aware ads), or maybe all TV becomes a personal
service.  I suppose news itself always has some multicast value (e.g. world
news), as do movies (content from Fox).

What a great week we've had.

phillip

-- 
https://sites.google.com/site/pmusumeci/