OT. Broadband in Australia

John,
In the instance of the St Peters exchange, Telstra was the teleco service provider to site. In their wisdom they only installed Pair Gain lines. Pair Gain lines do not support ADSL therefore Telstra charged for the installation of the new line from the Mascot exchange.

A brave new world.

Cheers

I'll take you word on it blue as I don't know the in and outs of the various line technicalities etc.

The point is that if the exchange or line is unable to meet the requirements of modern broadband because of equipment age, wrong type of lines or distance issues then someone has to pay to make the upgrades.
Optus is able to do the same as Telstra either via there own techs or by paying Telstra techs to undertake the works and yet they don't either.
It still means having enough customers to make it viable and none of them will bite the bullet and undertake a loss making upgrade.

My point is that everyone blames Telstra as they are the biggest but the problem is no different for any service provider.

As you say a brave new world in which they play pass the parcel.

We have had ADSL in our rural exchange for 2 years, but it has only been turned on in the last month.
Only telstra can do this and they have been waiting for a Govt hand out to do so, so stuff the public, telstra couldnt give a rats about people, or there needs.
Now providers can set up there gear, but telstra are charging like wounded bulls for anything that is needed to be done if you dont sign up to big pond.
Competition !!! What a crock, telstra are the only ones in rural areas, and this goes for mobiles too, and they know it.

Cheers Pesty

Pair gain systems and RIMs were a product of the late 80's to get extra circuits out of existing copper lines, a time when 9600bps modems were the norm and when ADSL wasn't on the horizon. They seemed a good idea at the time, but surely, 20 years on, Telstra have had their money's worth out of them and can invest in better infrastructure to meet today's technology requirements.
Sadly, in the city, the alternate wireless broadband is still pretty prohibitive in cost, even with other telcos offering competition.
Gerry

I think John Vic makes a fair point. Optus and others like to take the profits but they dont put in their share of the infrastructure and they dont want to pay a commercial rate for accessing Telstras. Sure they are happy to lay broadband when former communications minister handed out $1 billion to do it.
I am no lover of Telstra management but as a shareholder I am furious with the anti Telstra antics of the previous Govt.
Oh and how well does your Optus mobile work in Tassy??Do you think they care?

Pesty

For a person who still drives 20th centry 4WD technology


i would ask the following questions:

(1) Do you actually know what ADSL is.(use broadband myself)

(2 Would you know what to do with it if you did have access to it



Remember: abuse, spitting and spluttering is not tolerated on this forum in any form.

....but telstra was sold to the public under certain conditions. The value of the initial telstra shares was based on the existence of these conditions. If these conditions were not there, the initial telstra shares would have cost more because telstra would not have had that responsibility to the Aus public.

Now, the Telstra CEO (in part) wants to (with constant whinging), increase the value of telstra not so much by good management but by changing the conditions by which the company exists.

Just my thoughts.... so I could be wrong.

Thats the point robak, Telstra are required by law to allow other service providers access to the lines, exchanges and pipe/trench systems that existed when Telstra was first privatised and Telstra is allowed to charge a commercial rate of return to cover the maintenance and support of the said infrastructure.

The argument is two fold, one that these other service providers want to access the system and pay nothing for the privilege where as old Sole wants a reasonable commercial rate of return rather than a loss as the the ACCC is trying to inflict.
Example Sole wanted to charge $9.00 per month for a coper phone line and the ACCC has said the regulated price is going to be $2.50.
Remember that the other carriers will on sell this line at about $30.00 per month.
Telstra have to maintain and support the line for this "Directed Price" of $2.50 and the argument goes on.

The second and probably bigger point is that these other carriers think that this regulation extends to new installations and infrastructure installed by Telstra today such as fibre optic cabling for broadband or Next G mobile system etc.
Sole says no way are my competitors getting a free ride on my shareholders money by using their new infrastructure at the ridiculous regulated prices directed by the ACCC on the old system.
If you want to compete then build your own lines and infrastructure of pay me a reasonable rate to use mine, but no free ride.

As I said above Telstra get blamed all the time but there is nothing stopping Optus from going to say Pesty's exchange and installing it's own ADSL equipment and tying Pesty's phone line in the exchange to its equipment and charging him for the privilege other than they would have to send a tech out perhaps just for Pesty as everyone else may want to stay with Telstra or AAPT etc which makes the whole business for them unviable so they don't do it.
Its left up to Telstra to service the country areas of Aus which they do with government subsidies to assist with covering the extra cost of the remote service.

Optus etc only pick the eyes out of metro areas as thats the easy money and stuff the country people.
Its a very complex world now and this is a very simple explanation.
I don't disagree with Sol's stance as all he is trying to do is protect the interests of his shareholders which is what the law requires him to do.

One other small point, Its a fact that the other carriers like to blame Telstra for their problems to politicize the issue and to make out its all the fault of Telstra. (I don't doubt that sometimes the problem can be Telstra)
These other carriers don't give a $hit about the country people as there is no money to be made from you so they simply use Telstra as the whipping boy for their own lack of interest in servicing the Australian public as awhole and blame Telstra for the problem everytime.

That's right. every company is looking out for it's own shareholders and that's their job. What the cost of line rental should be is beyond us. We can only go by the rhetoric we hear. it's all a politacal game with everyone justifying their existance with the ACCC trying to be the mediator. But you are right, it would be nice for optus and others to roll out their own network - but it's just too risky so we end up with this stalemate.

As to providing services to the country people... that is one of the conditional costs of telstra being a private company.
If the shareholders disagree with this, then they shouldn't have bought the shares.

I believe that what the govt should've done when selling telstra, is to create a govt company that provides the network which it then leases to the private companies - but then telstra would've been valued for less and the government would nat have made as much money out of the sale.

R.

I don't think any Telstra shareholder is whinging about servicing the country, they do it now and the service is government subsidised so that a person in say Birdsville does not pay anymore for a phone line that someone in Melbourne.

What should or should not have been done is all by the wayside now.
If other carriers want to compete then compete on an equal footing is Sol's view and he has the guts to stand up to the government who think they can direct a publicly listed company owned by its shareholders to do what they want.

For 25 years I have maintained quite a number of business phone lines, fax lines, ADSL connections, 3G mobiles, my home line and a Sat phone all with Telstra and I live in a semi rural area outside of Melbourne.
Telstra provide me with very good service in all aspects any problems that I have had have been very minor and easily fixed by a quick phone call to them.

Everytime I read about phone issues on here its almost always people who use other carriers because they are chasing the cheapest price service, Its costs $$$ to offer the service in the first place and when you cut the price the service level falls, go figure??

It's unfortunate that it doesn't have equal footing but the very existance of it being a publicly listed company was dependand on it having these liabilites and everybody who bought into it knew that.

Perhaps they should introduce a law where these liabilties are extinguished in five or ten years.

R

What people knew about pair gained cables and their limitations?

You have to be kidding

Addendum

No shareholders new about the poor planning.

I can get ADSL in and outlying town as the cables to my home are not pair gained.

Cheers

Lucy

This the road / track we travelled on in Sep this year next to Trans East railway rail Nextgen

also "Optus has invested more than $10 billion in the construction of fixed, mobile and satellite networks. These include central business district networks and suburban local access networks, optic fibre networks, national trunk and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) networks and international undersea cables."

there are three line next to the train track

Telstra
Nextgen
AATP

Optus

runs across around Eyre hwy

Cheers

Richard

but still get up my goat re telstra...

Someone definitely fed you a phurphy there... Only one provider can provision a line at a time. Can't share a line as the providers patch the line to their own port in the exchange.

Sorry I missed something here???
Why would you call Telstra to ask them to move a phone line provide by another provider???
You need to speak to the provider of that phone line and they will organize the move.
It sounds like Telstra are saying we can't shift their line but if you want us to provide you with another line it will cost you $300-???
Which is fair.

John,

My old house phone number was with Telstra and I have Bigpond as my ADSL provider. When I arranged for the relocation I called telstra to find out wether it could be done to another providers phone line with an existing internet connection.
I was told that it was possible and that 2 different internet providers could use the one line.

Kev

Kev, that may be what they told you originally but now they're backing out of it, right?
My understanding of the technology is it can't be done for ADSL, and it now seems that Telstra agrees.
Only way you could share one line for two different providers is with dial-up.

I think MrBitchi has answered that question.
One line one set of equipment only.

Telstra has offered to install you a new line for $300- into your outlaws house for your phone number and ADSL connection.