11th May 2007 – Sydney, Australia – Telstra has removed from its website a poll that showed 97 per cent of respondents believed Telstra was responsible for the state of broadband in Australia, claiming the poll was rigged.

This is not the first of Telstra’s polls that have been unfavourable to Telstra. As pointed out by APC (www.apcmag.com.au) yesterday, Telstra’s Now We Are Talking website polls have consistently shown that respondents believe Telstra is the problem, not the solution.

APC reported that Telstra’s own archived polls on the site show the following:

• Do you think Australia is over-regulated?  No: 65.6%
• Will reducing staff numbers at Telstra increase efficiency?  No: 79.2%
• What services should be subject to regulation?  All services 49% (highest rated answer)
• How do you think Telstra is progressing with its plans to provide new and better services for customers?  I can't see much difference or it's going in reverse 65.3%
• Who is mostly to blame for Australia missing out on a high-speed fibre network? Telstra 40.2% (highest rated answer)
• Do you think passengers should be able to make mobile phone calls inflight?   No 64.7% (Telstra is going ahead as Qantas' inflight mobile roaming trial partner anyway)
• Should the ACCC Chairman resign after the regulator was found to have acted illegally towards Telstra?  No 73.1%
• Which feature would most likely influence your decision to buy wireless broadband:  Price 68.8% (Telstra is by far the most expensive wireless broadband provider)

“Maybe ALL of these results are rigged, but we cannot know,” said a Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) spokesperson. “We do know, however, that while Telstra is saying Australia needs an open, public debate on broadband, it will ‘rig’ that debate if it can,” he said.

According to T4, Telstra last week intervened to stop the G9 presenting its proposal for an alternative fibre to the node (FTTN) access network in Melbourne.

“This was a particularly dishonest attempt by Telstra to stifle debate and discredit the G9,” said a T4 spokesperson.

According to T4, the G9 was to present to the Telecommunication Society of Australia (TSA). For many years, the TSA has had its events and secretarial support hosted by Telstra in Melbourne and Optus in Sydney.

Telstra then published a claim that the planned presentation was ‘mysteriously cancelled’. The implication was that the G9 had something to hide.

In fact, the G9 presentation was cancelled when the TSA was told that Telstra would not let the event proceed in the Telstra theatre, where it was scheduled. Telstra later admitted this.

There has been only one other occasion when Telstra did not allow a TSA event to proceed in its theatre. That was last year when a scheduled presentation from the Competitive Carriers’ Coalition (CCC) was transferred to a hotel at the last minute when all the suitable rooms in the Telstra building “mysteriously” became unavailable the day before the event.

To Telstra’s credit, in that case it arranged another venue. However, many TSA members reported that the email notices of the change of venue “mysteriously” failed to reach them.

“For a company that keeps demanding a public debate, Telstra seems remarkably reluctant to countenance other points of view,” said a T4 spokesperson. “And by the way, when are we going to see any detail of the FTTN deal that Telstra says it has been negotiating in secret with the Government?”

“The Tell the Truth Telstra campaign will continue to monitor the Telstra myth-creation machine, but it is becoming clear that Australians are seeing through the Telstra’s litany of misleadingly statements and know who really deserve greater scrutiny,” he said.

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About “Tell the Truth Telstra” (T4) - www.tellthetruthtelstra.com.au

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) campaign was launched in April 2007, to counter Telstra’s campaign of misinformation on telecommunications and broadband competition and regulation in Australia.

Tell the Truth Telstra is an initiative of Australia’s leading telecommunications carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) including AAPT, Adam Internet, Austar, iiNet, Internode, Macquarie Telecom, Powertel, Primus Telecom, Telarus, TransACT, WestNet and Unwired.

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) initiative commenced with a united complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) asking it to investigate whether Telstra’s conduct amounts to misleading and deceptive conduct.

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) initiative documents a list of Telstra’s myths and highlights their misleading nature.  An accompanying education program includes an information kit for MPs, a public Web site (www.tellthetruthtelstra.com.au), and a series of information sessions for MPs, exposing the truth behind Telstra’s attempt to gain relief from regulation.

PRIVACY POLICY