happymowing,
Telecom was sold ""as is"" to become Telstra, with the attached conditions they provided services that Telecom already had in place, like phone booths and services to remote areas. If it was such a sore point then the share holders could have done something about it before buying Telecom / Telstra. Telstra was never forced to do anything, that's the way it was sold. If it wasn't made in to law as a declared service, then no one outside a major city would have landlines. Is this something you would prefer to see?
There are conditions attached to to the way Telstra behaves because in the Australian telco landscape it is unique as it owns the network and sells the network and uses the same network. Do you honestly think that without any forced behavior that Telstra would allow any other company access to its network? And without access to its network, no other company would be able to offer competitive services, and there would be massive price hikes by the company that has a MONOPOLY, that is, Telstra. The ACCC ensures that Telstra doesn't sell Bigpond internet connections at a price lower than it sells the same connection to other ISPs. I think that's fair, it fosters competition and growth.
Telstra charges my ISP $10 more to supply me an adsl connection due to an archaic law that stipulates if the exchange has no other ISP infrastructure, it falls in to the ""regional 2"" price range. It has nothing to do with distances as there are exchanges in the middle of Melbourne that have a classification of Regional 2, and that allows Telstra to charge $10 per service that exchanges classified as Regional 1. That's daylight robbery.
I am also forced to pay Telstra to have a phone line so I can get adsl. Telstra have fought tooth and nail to stop other ISPs putting their infrastructure in to Telstra exchanges so that other ISPs can offer "naked" adsl, that is, an adsl service without having to have a traditional voice service. The majority of Telstra''s income is generated by having the compulsory phone line in to every house in order to have an internet connection. I want choice, and Telstra''s greed is stopping it.
The sooner the NBN is completed, and the monster that is Telstra is bought to heel, the better.
Oh, and if it isn't clear by now, I cant stand Telstra and their business tactics.
</rant> lol