[LINK] Shareholder value above all

[David Boxall]

Source: 
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/BIRRR/permalink/438677579674268/?comment_id=438785029663523&offset=0&total_comments=6&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R2%22%7D>
> Yesterday I went to an telecomms engineer's meeting regarding recent, 
> current and future Broadband Access technologies; and there was plenty 
> of open debate, primarily on technologies. The general consensus was 
> that FTTN (ADSL, VSDL, HFC etc.) will have to be removed and replaced 
> by FTTP within a decade, so FTTP is by far the most economic way to 
> go, an dthe others are an expensive false economy.
>
> Several of us argued that the geography of Australia (Homesteads in 
> particular) bears very little correlation with "global" telecomms 
> infrastructure templates nominally based on (western) Europe; which 
> BTW is laced with a mesh of high capacity Inter-Exchange SMOF cable 
> systems (Australia has virtually nil SMOF mesh outside the capital 
> cities).
>
> I was mentally stunned by one comment from a retired senior telecomms 
> engineering executive that very squarely related network 
> infrastructure investment to Shareholder value and absolutely nothing 
> else. But it explained everything in a sentence!
>
> Country cities were seen as cost centres (negative profit), towns were 
> rated much lower, villages lower again and Homesteads was an explicitive.
>
> It is now extremely clear to me that as long as the telecomms 
> infrastructure is controlled by the private sector, then absolutely no 
> telecomms infrastructure will be built outside the main State Capital 
> cities - unless it makes a big profit for Shareholders.
>
> These private sector business executives have the diametrically wrong 
> mindset for managing the structure, planning, provisioning, rollout 
> and maintenance of telecomms infrastructure for Australia. These 
> private sector business executives do have the perfect mindset for the 
> retail bundling, packaging, reselling, and timing of telecomms retail 
> products and services for Shareholders.
>
> Australia's very blinkered privatised telecomms infrastructure 
> economic policy is killing the inland primary production and has 
> virtually killed all inland secondary industries, which is in turn a 
> seriously large opportunity cost (economics) to the Federal Government 
> that is reducing the Australian Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 
> soccer it is called a repetitive "own goal"!
>
> Therefore, the only way out of this disastrous national telecomms 
> infrastructure wreckage is to immediately put all the telecomms 
> infrastructure in sub-Government (Commission) hands, so the natural 
> focus is to provide consistent Broadband technology overall Australia 
> (i.e. outside the main capital cities) and focus the Retail Reselling 
> in Private hands (as their core business).
>
> It is not Telstra's fault - they are doing what they can for their 
> Shareholders, and teasing out (delaying) the transfer of all the 
> telecomms infrastructure to the NBN for as long as Telstra can, and to 
> be as expensive as possible to the Federal Government to maximise 
> Shareholder value. That is a lot of RED TAPE!

-- 
David Boxall                    |  I have seen the past
                                |  And it worked.
http://david.boxall.id.au       |               --TJ Hooker