Telstra – the Boys Who Cried Deadline
28th October 2008 – Sydney, Australia – Telstra’s shrill threats that it will refuse to tender for the National Broadband Network unless the Government guarantees it will not support a structurally separated network suffers from one major weakness – Telstra’s own tattered credibility.
Telstra has time and again stamped its foot and said it will take its bat and ball and go home unless it gets what it wants.
However, when it comes to the crunch Telstra can no sooner bring itself to walk away than a pig can refuse to put its snout in the trough.
In 2006, Telstra said it would refuse to bid for the Broadband Connect program proposed by the previous Government. Telstra’s now US-based regulatory consultant Phil Burgess said it was an “unsound” way to build networks.
Just days later, Telstra lodged a bid that it later admitted in court had been developed for months.
In June 2007, Telstra said that if the Government did not make a decision to surrender to Telstra’s regulatory demands by the end of the financial year, it would pull its plans for a fibre to the node (FTTN) network and spend the money elsewhere.
CEO Sol Trujillo said that the deadline was the end of Telstra’s annual budget process and it would spend the money set aside for FTTN on something else. In a letter to staff he said:
“We do have other plans in the ready, and if the FTTN decision does not break our way – or does not happen in a timely way or does not happen at all – we will be presenting these alternatives to the Telstra Board for review and approval in the coming weeks as part of our annual budget process that continues until July.”
August 2007 came and went. Today, Telstra is still claiming it is willing to build the FTTN network, but only if it is given what it wants. How this is possible when two annual budgeting processes have been and gone since its threat, it has not explained.
Telstra Countrywide managing director, Geoff Booth, was last week quoted in Rural Press saying in relation to the National Broadband Network bidding process: "We cannot submit a tender, we will not submit a tender … people think we're playing a bluff here, but I spoke to the chairman yesterday, and the CEO this morning, and the message is clear: we will not bid if separation is not taken off the table."
It is unlikely that any bookmaker will accept a bet Telstra will not deliver on this latest threat come the November 26 deadline for bids to be submitted.
Any bookie worth his salt will have studied the form and know that Telstra has a history of not telling the truth when it comes to these types of threats to Governments.
[1] Sol Trujillo, letter to staff, 13 June 2007.
About “Tell the Truth Telstra” (T4):
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, Optus, Primus Telecom, Telarus, TransACT, Unwired, WestNet and the Competitive Carriers’ Coalition.
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 website , and a series of information sessions for MPs, exposing the truth behind Telstra’s attempt to gain relief from regulation | 
