the role of hatred in all this..., page-9

timber,

Telstra have made many attempts to invest and mostly have been stymied by government/regulators. When allowed to go for it they have excelled beyond expectations - 3G for example. But with broadband the gov/regulators knocked them back. The 2005 proposal to roll out fttn was killed by regulators who would not accept that this was risky - TLS worked on an 18% ROI, the ACCC would not accept this but did not, as I recall, say what they would accept. Simultaneously the government had a "whoops moment" when they realised that a fibre network would make all their buddies' DSLAM's in the Telstra exchanges redundant - and ran for cover.
Meanwhile the finance guys at Telstra did what any prudent finance guys would do - they paid out their unusable capital as dividends.

btw. I am not talking out of my back packet to any degree - did very well out of T1, passed on T2 but bought in after the slide and did ok. Bought into T3 and have topped up in low 3's for an average price of $3.28. What pisses me off is the utter ignorance of the players on the government side. I recognise we are living in The Age of Ignorance but these jokers really top it off.

The common denominator in all this nonsense is the executive branch of government (public service) who have failed dismally to provide meaningful advice to the various elected branches of government that they have administered - for the reasons I have previously given vent to.