At last, it’s out in the open for all to see.
The G9 group of companies have released their proposal for a FTTN network.
The main highlights are the prices!
$15 – $25 for basic telephone access.
$19 – $29 for basic telephone access and a 1.5Mbps internet connection.. Currently, we pay at least 30 ex GST just for the 1.5Mbps connection, with phone costing extra.
$40 – $50 for basic telephone access and a “up to 24Mbps” internet connection.. ie. ADSL2+.
As you can see, the G9 seem to really want to attack right at the balls of Telstra’s monopoly pricing, quoting in the proposal (which I am yet to rip open – its too late) – “because unlike Telstra the G9 is not trying to protect existing monopoly profits”.
They really do seem to dislike Telstra’s anticompetitive pricing, and are aggressively attacking it, but at the same time having pricing at a range which should allow the network to be built, and a return as well as fund expansion.
The above prices are reason enough to accept the proposal without any consideration, consulting the public will likely reveal the same, with happy customers all around.
I doubt Telstra will be competing hard with that proposal, it does seem to really hit them hard with an attack, and the G9 do seem like they want to go all the way and win, there’s no room in those prices for Telstra to come back with a counter offer, with similar pricing, or well, anything to compete with.
The proposal is yet to be fullly read by me, but I plan to tear it apart, and see what we are all in for.
The prices above confirm my earlier suspicion that the prices were for both phone and net, as I doubt there’d be any LSS at the node level.
Key points to dig into are how they propose to cut customers over.
And now, the wait begins, Now We Are Talking are going to catch up eventually, and we’ll see the same arguments go around again: “Think of the shareholders, won’t somebody think of the shareholders”, “Don’t vote it in, it’s from Singapore” – last I checked, Simon Hackett of Internode (an Australian company) employed Australians and maintained his business privately, as an Australian. That therefore makes Internode, one of 9 in the proposal, fully Australian owned.
Optus, a Singapore goverment SingTel company, maintains operations within Australia, and therefore assist the Australian economy, and compete FAIRLY in the Australian telecommunications industry.
Of the above, Telstra can’t claim any. They have a percentage of foreign shareholders, are managed by foreigners who will take their bonuses back to their foreign countries, and don’t compete fairly in the Australian telecommunications industry.
They could claim they have some Australian shareholder ownership, but seriously, who cares anymore? They bought, they chose to, they had every oppourtunity to sell, they chose not to, that’s their fault.
The flaw that can be outlined in the proposal so far is the 1.5Mbps minimum speed, to which I think there is no problem with, having all those 256k fraudband users at 1.5Mbps would lift our OECD ranking significantly, and that’s the only reason why we are down as far as we are, because of Telstra limiting infrastructure, and marketing crap, completely the opposite of the G9 proposal.
Nearly time to enjoy cheap, fast, reliable internet access and telephone services.