I’ve no time for the ultra-conservative know-nothings Howard had as comms ministers, but it’s unfair not to note that it was the Keating government that had the best opportunity to do a structural separation and more of the current difficulties have arisen from that failure than from the privatisation. Keating wanted to do it but got rolled by Beazley and the union lobby.

As for those nostalgic for a nationalised vertically-integrated telco monopoly, you must be joking. The old PMG/Telecom was famous for its hostility to customers and its change-averse bureaucracy. It could take months to get a new phone line, it ruthlessly used regulation to suppress any hint of competition (eg the only legal handsets in Australia were Telecom ones), it had tremendously opaque pricing and it was a vehicle for blatant pork-barrelling by the pollies. Government telco monopolies around the world have a dreadful record.

Though they have said that they will retain government ownership of the ‘poles & wires’.

Though they have said that they will retain government ownership of the ‘poles & wires’.

I think you can take this article, put it in a drawer for a couple of years (3-5), Pull it out, Replace Telstra with Electricity, Sol with another name and you’ll have a pretty good summary of the NSW electricity.

Iemma is trying his best to make sure the Liberals cant use the Wall to Wall Labor governments argument at the next federal election by Selling off the electricity generation and retail assets .

Might send him a letter begging him to get rid of the Snowy too, hoping reverse psychology might work.

Telstra becomes two companies – the regulated and unregulated and every shareholder gets a share in each – independantly tradeable. (By unregulated I mean not subject to the current special licence conditions that are part of their carrier license, issued BEFORE they were privatised – hence all shareholders are aware of).

The regulated company has the assets that require regulation – pit and pipe, exchange builds, copper local loop, some regional fibre assets – maybe not even voice switching. This company is allowed to make a regulated return, let’s say 10-12%. It would suit a specific kind of investor looking for nice, regulated, guaranteed returns from all players equally (including the unregulated company).

The unregulated company gets all the rest. It can do whatever it wants but is required to buy from the regulated company all things that the regulated company does. It’s freewheeling style suits another kind of investor.

This may mean that, because no one is worse off (and potentially they’re better off by being able to more closely select their asset risk class) no compensation has to be offered (and any that does need to can be delayed).

This means that the regulated company can then get on with building FTTN or FTTH without us worrying about what happens with the vertically integrated whole remonopolising the market.

Yes – but if the Government took a majority stake, they could then force Telstra to sell at a fair price – rather than the blackmail price that Sol would likely insist on.

I am not proposing the board give the infrastructure back to the Government – merely that they sell it at a price approaching the sane value.

Universities’ record of involvement with anything required to operate at a profit isn’t encouraging. And you need profits to fund future capital investment, quite apart from providing a return to those who put up the original money.