rate this post in protest sack thodey, page-7

I don't think Thodey is at fault. The problem is the government sold it to the public for a pretty penny, glossing over the regulatory risk in the prospectus. When John Howard described Telstra as a fantastic opportunity to invest (I am not sure whether that was T1 or T2), he basically painted it as the goose that laid golden eggs and regulatory risk was pushed to the back of everyone's head. He might have said other things but this is what comes to mind for me immediately. My history does not go back to when Telstra was a parastatal but I doubt ACCC was as tough on Telstra (or was it Telecom Australia) then as it is now.

Telstra should never have been sold with the fixed line network, which it now carries around its neck like a shackle. Telstra's objectives as a profit-making entity are very different from those of government and this conflict of objectives was never going to be resolved in the current scenario.

If this NBN goes ahead, I hope the government whoever it is does not commit the same sin when privatising the NBN. The fibre network should remain in public ownership (which pretty much means the NBN stays private), if it gets sold off, we'll have the same fiasco as we have now with Telstra for the new owners of the NBN.