A few more nails in Telstra's coffin

The biggest problem with telecommunications in Australia is Telstra. When the government privatised Telstra they allowed them to keep control of Australia's telecommunications infrastructure, the infrastructure that the taxpayer had funded. As such, every other entrant in the market was forced either to create their own infrastructure, or rent it off Telstra. Only the largest companies, such as Optus, could do the former, and all the other companies that did the later were forced to buy off Telstra, and then compete with Telstra on top of that. Only when Telstra is taken out of the picture can one be optimistic about the future of telecommunications in Australia, especially at the price-sensitive consumer level.

I've argued in the past that one way this might happen is through mobile data, although traditionally in Australia mobile data has been very expensive. If you can get a good rate on your data, then you're effectively taking Telstra out of the equation. Interestingly, this has now happened, and Virgin mobile (an Optus subsidiary) are now offering a mobile telephony/broadband product. For heavy data users, 4GB of bandwidth a month is a bit on the low side (and we don't yet know what sort of latency will result from this use of the mobile network), but for pretty much everyone else, $60 a month, with unlimited local and interstate long landline calls, and no line rental (the $30 a month that pretty much every Australian household pays to Telstra for the privilege of having a phone line to their residence) looks like a pretty good deal. They'll even give you a local landline number, so people who call you wont have to pay mobile rates.

In addition, an increasing number of ISPs are offering ULL products, where you rent a bare land-line and either use it exclusively for DSL (having no ability to receive calls) or get your phone service from the ISP. Telstra still charges about $17.70 (according to the comments on Whirlpool) to the ISP for the use of the line, so it's never going to be dirt cheap, but it's still better than what Telstra charges you as a consumer. It's not cutting Telstra out of your life completely, but if you're happy to use your mobile or VoIP for voice calls, then you can avoid paying for a service you'll never use.

Note that I'm not advocating any of these products – I've never used them and aren't associated with them in any way – but it's good to see alternatives to Telstra's effective monopoly emerging. I think we're quickly (much more quickly than I would have expected) approaching a time where mobile data will become commonplace and Telstra's reason for existence will be severely curtailed. Maybe then Telstra will compete on the basis of innovation, price and features, rather than through it's stranglehold on Australia's infrastructure.