Where to now for long term investors of Telstra, page-2501

I have bought in the past few days (previously did not hold) - but not with any great conviction.

Telstra seems to me to have one factor against it - management. There always seems to be a bit of paralysis in the place. Sometimes you get the impression that marketing plays by competitors have been and gone before Telstra's response - assuming it had one - gets through half its committees. The Ooyala business could never have been a good fit really.

On the plus side, it has spades of capable people and telco engineering skills. AAPT and Optus don't seem much into high quality (and high priced) network engineering capability since their respective takeovers.

Trouble for Telstra is there's not so much demand for all that currently, especially since the NBN was given a monopoly on fixed line domestic internet infrastructure.

Currently for investors, Telstra seems to me to have two factors in its favour.

1. A dividend play. Despite Shorten's plans, fully franked dividends are many people's preferred income investment in Oz. At current price the play looks good - though I concede it could get better if the price slide continues.

2. The NBN fiasco. Apparently in April there's likely to be another announcement by the NBN - this time related to HFC - about the multi-technology mix disaster. It's beyond my comprehension that 8 years after the NBN's first connection they still only have a bit over half of Australia who are NBN "ready to connect", and only about 30% of the country actually connected.
This one of the worst managed and cost ineffective infrastructure projects anywhere in the developed world. It was due to be finished in Jun 2020 (unlikely now with the HFC fiasco) at which stage 40% of Australia will be serviced by now old technology (VDSL) which parts of the developed world are starting to decommission due to slow speeds and high opex.

Technology in this space changes all the time, and even if TLS only has mediocre management - my opinion is that there should be a way for Telstra as the country's largest telco to take advantage of the NBN disaster over the next few years.

Optus is already competing in a limited fashion with NBN by offering 4G home broadband with very generous data allowances.
Fixed line wireless towers also seems to be popping up in the suburbs to take advantage of the public's frustration with waiting for NBN to come to their area.

Whether by coincidence or not, the NBN fiasco has extended Foxtel's life. With Australia's 56th world ranking in fixed line internet speed (behind such technology powerhouses as Ukraine, Panama, Uruguay etc), hard to have effective competing high def streaming services.

Just maybe Telstra will now get its act together here and start making effective investments in things it has capabilities in. But I'm sure many will say they'll only believe it when they see it.