What the Rudd Government is doing in the telecommunications,...

What the Rudd Government is doing in the telecommunications, game, defies logic in so many ways.

While we have many roads, like the Pacific Highway, dysfunctional slow every day, hospitals dysfunctional overloaded constantly, a public transport system that is of terrible standard, and many other public functions hopelessly inefficient, our Government chooses to focus money and resources on something that really isn't broken!

The overwhelming majority of Australians do not have issues with Internet speed and it is very affordable with plenty of competition. The irony is that the minority, who may want more bandwidth , usually want it for use with things like downloading bulk volumes of pirate movies and pornography - things our Government should want to discourage.

Telstra makes a lot of money because it is a well run corporation that many customers are happy to pay a premium to use. You only need to compare Telstra's expensive NextG mobile network plans with those of it's competitors, Vodafone, 3 and Optus. Telstra is far more expensive in almost every case, yet it gets the majority of customers on a network that is less than 2 years old. Why? Because they do things better and they don't have the luxury of being able to sit back and have favours delivered to them by the ACCC, a privilege the others have.

Telstra should be admired for being able to perform so well in the face of these waves of totally irrational commercial punishment.

It seems our Government inadvertently want to heart the mums-and-dads they sold the company to, so as to roll-out a more costly network that people don't need to help other companies that are mostly overseas owned. The Rudd Government's scheme will almost certainly mean that our Internet will cost us more in the future.

If Telstra can diplomatically weave its way through this madness during the next few years, I think shareholders will be handsomely rewarded.

I believe the Government are medalling with something they don't understand, to impress people who also don't understand. Maybe that makes perfect politics.

Maybe Telstra need to put Graham Richardson on retainer!

FYI - I am a Telstra shareholder and ications industry.