New News: Telstra dislikes G9 proposal

It’s not really new news, any idiot could have guessed that Telstra would not like G9’s proposal at all.

Would you like the idea of someone else coming along, and being able to pay you a fair price for access to your copper wire, and selling it to consumers, and other ISPs for less than you sell it to them for, thereby exposing you for the greedy pig you are?

Of course not. You would want to maintain secrecy and try and at any way possible stop such a deal going ahead so that you aren’t exposed for ripping off consumers as you have been doing for the several years previously.

So, Telstra’s next item after the vexatious law suit in the federal court is the next item, a submission to the ACCC opposing the G9 proposal from going ahead, with several reasons excuses used to try and persuade the outcome to not be a G9 – ACCC approved FTTN.

Telstra, through the release of a public version of a submission to the ACCC, stated a few reasons that they believe the G9 proposal should be rejected. There’s hundreds of them, but alot are just repeated rubbish, so I will cover what I think are the key ones in their submission.

1. Telstra claim the G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme.
– There’s no proof of this. Therefore, Telstra’s submission should be rubbished, as the information contained in the submission is inaccurate rubbish.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

2. G9’s proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme, which degrades services, making cusotmers worse off than they are today.
– How is that so? G9’s proposal proposes an open wholesale access regime, making access equal terms to every provider in Australia. In fact, they go as far as setting up a seperate wholesale / network only body to avoid any conflicts with retail altogether.

Further, there is no proof the G9 scheme would degrade anything, let alone services. Oh wait, it will degrade something, it’ll degrade Telstra’s profits. Can’t have that.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

3. The G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme which forecloses a faster, more innovative broadband future for Australia.
– How do they figure that? ADSL2+ is faster than Telstra’s artificially limited ADSL1, so the outcome would already be faster, and as for innovation, well, let’s not ask Telstra about innovation, the innovation they do is in the arts of following competitors. That’s been true in everything that has been done recently..

First with ADSL2+: Not Telstra. – iiNet & Internode.
First with 3G: Not Telstra. – 3 Mobile.
First with Capped Plans: Not Telstra. – 3, Optus, Vodafone, and many ISPs.
First with Services at affordable prices: Not Telstra. Every other ISP.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

4. The G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme which imposes a tortured, dysfunctional ownership and management structure that will promote collusion ahead of efficiency.
– The ownership model is not tortured, the ownership model is very much a great model, in fact, better than anything Telstra has proposed.

Look what happens when a retail provider is also the wholesale provider and the infrastructure owner. Any idiot can see we don’t need this situation any more, otherwise, why bother with an expert taskforce?

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

5. The G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme which perverts the access regime, depriving Telstra of its network so that FANOC can establish a monopoly managed by a cartel.
– The proposal is very sound. Essentially, they will not be depriving Telstra of anything. What they will be doing is being a infrastructure upgrade in the middle of the network. Remote switching technology enables lines to be switched between node and exchange provided, so there is no deprivation happening. Oh, hang, I forgot. Deprivation of greedy profits. Of course. Well, who cares about that? The Australian Consumer? Nope. The Competition ? Nope. The greedy pigs? Some of them.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

6. The G9 proposal is so contrary to the purpose and intent of the access regime that the commission should dismiss it out of hand.
– How is it contrary?
Does it promote competition? Yes.
Does it bring lower prices to consumers? Yes.
Is it financially viable? Yes.
Does it lock out any current providers from servicing their customers behind the node? No.
Is it anti-competitive? No.
Does it allow Telstra to still provide services to its customers? Yes.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission assess proposals to determine if they are going to work with competition and consumers. Now, everything in the G9 proposal is so pro competition and so pro consumer, I doubt they’d ever get a competition notice.
Telstra knows what these are though, they’ve got several of them.. How many hang on the walls in the director’s meeting room ?
Yet, they still can’t seem to get the basics of a competitive environment working.
How can Telstra be trusted on any view with regard to competition, when they suck so bad at it as it is?

Telstra’s claim: RUBBISH.

7. G9 proposes only best efforts 1.5 Mbps minimum speed service. Telstra already offers faster speeds, to more homes than G9 would pass.
– Really? Does Telstra offer 24Mbps as is written in the proposal for the G9 FTTN network, at affordable prices? Does Telstra propose to drop the current price of service access to match the degrading technology they use with ADSL1, like is proposed in the G9 proposal?

8. Business customers lose access to high quality (not), high speed services (such as Frame Relay and DDS) on which they rely for mission critical applications, in return for a residential-centric “best efforts” service.
– One response here. How does Telstra service those business customers now? Using the same network that they use for residential services. Further to this, those business customers Telstra speak of would reach faster speeds on the G9 network, not because of the network upgrade, but because of the unrestricted access speeds!

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

9. Basic Telephone services go backwards as more parties supplying seperate inputs struggle to co-ordinate provisioning and maintenance processes which are today seemlessly managed by Telstra.
– Question for Sol Trujillo: What percentage did you state recently of phone lines had faults on them ? I recall 18%. That’s on an asset Telstra owned and were paid excessive and increased line rental to maintain. How did 18% of faults occur if they were being paid monthly line rental to maintain it? Shock. They didn’t spend the money on maintenance, did they?
Anyway, how do they figure they will go backwards, when they will be spending money to start with on providing an improved, enhanced, advanced, competition friendly service?

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

10. Wholesale customers lose access to some current wholesale services without adequate substitutes.
– Hmmm… I’m sure many of them won’t be complaining about having to supply services on the G9 network instead.. In fact, I’m sure a poll would demonstrate many of them can’t wait for the G9 to roll out!

Telstra’s claim: RUBBISH.

That’s the first 10 on the first few pages of the rubbish that is Telstra’s submission to the ACCC about the G9.

If you read through as I did whilst writing this, you quickly get an idea of how close those 134 pages are to the rubbish bin.
It’s rubbish, full of mistruths and lies to push Telstra’s agenda, and given the chance, I am sure the G9 would happily go through and recap all of the rubbish on that mountainous waste of paper.

Telstra, here’s a tip: Next time you want to get attention to a submission that you don’t like, maybe try using facts, instead of lies, mistruths, and rubbish to push your agenda.

Could it be your agenda simply wouldn’t stand on its own two feet ? Well, the question to ask there is: Why?

Enjoy!