[/.]Australia's largest telco to be split

viking

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/17/0217208

The package, believed to have been approved by cabinet last night, will force a furious Telstra to create distinct network and retail divisions, with separate premises and management but under the same company structure.

The government has done this in a bid to improve communications service in regional Australia, so it can privatize the rest of the telco. This is a welcome move by many after Telstra was accused of taking advantage of its network against competitors.

This is what our government should have done when privatising eircom, if they had we wouldn't be in the monopolistic mess that we are in now.

Sponge Bob

The Australians learnt directly from the Irish Experience. The Irish embassy actually briefed them on the national issues that arose when we privatised Eircom in the late 1990s . The unions in Australia will be offered shares in the retail arm only for example

They will spilt Telstra, sell off the retail arm in full and ensure that the wholesale arm is properly regulated if (or before) they even think of selling it.

Some Australian phone lines are up to 20 Miles long and termites attack the poles (as they do) but their USO is still better than ours depite the extreme conditions

Its nice to see that someone has learnt from the Irish Disaster

Sponge Bob

Keep a close eye on developments in Australia on the Whirlpool site (a combination of Boards and IoffL all in one)

http://whirlpool.net.au/

lucernarian

I was on that website a few months ago. It seemed very good allright. I was also amazed to learn, simply put, that many of their cabinets contain nothing but pairgains with ratios of 24:1 and more.

Sponge Bob, I remember asking you before if there were any cabinets with fibre in them. Would these cabinets be the equivalent of these RIMs that the Aussies speak of?

paulm17781

Why I was in Australia I looked at some of the broadband products. They were probably worse than here. That was 2 years ago but I was surprised by the bad value.

Sponge Bob

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Sponge Bob, I remember asking you before if there were any cabinets with fibre in them. Would these cabinets be the equivalent of these RIMs that the Aussies speak of?

yes but Australians RIMS are more like pairgain cabinets than remote copper into fibre concentrators .

the problem with Our ones is that they are designed not to take DSL .

JohnC.

Sponge Bob wrote:

Some Australian phone lines are up to 20 Miles long and termites attack the poles (as they do) but their USO is still better than ours depite the extreme conditions

I'm just back from Darwn (currently in Sydney, for another week) and they use metal poles up there. It is also very, very remote. But they still have wires going everywhere. I saw them 2 days ago on a 770km drive in the middle of nowhere, in vast swathes which are completely flooded during the wet season.