Telstra has claimed the ACCC is increasing the price of telecommunications in the bush and called the now defunct OPEL syndicate a ‘scam’ while defending their record of investment in rural and regional areas.
Speaking at the Victorian Rural Press Club last week Dr Phil Burgess, head of public policy and communications at Telstra, claimed that Graeme Samuels, head of government regulator the ACCC, has an urban centric focus on policy. He claimed this is pushing up prices of rural broadband and telecommunication services.
“The policy the ACC have decided is that people in the bush should pay more for telecommunication services…a lot more,” Dr Burgess said while explaining the negative impact de-average prices on rural areas.
“They have priced telecoms services in a way that is contrary to every major national policy and to every public opinion,” he said.
He referred to the ACCC’s refusal last year to guarantee third party access of Telstra’s network would not be regulated.
The new Rudd Government has since given that guarantee which sparked a major broadband upgrade by Telstra resulting in higher broadband speed ADSL2+ services to 907 telephone exchanges, serving 2.4 million homes and businesses.
He was scathing of the now-defunct alliance OPEL that was granted a multi million dollar broadband contract by the Howard Government claiming it was a ‘scam to start with’ and that nothing would have been gained from the OPEL syndicate.
“There is no reason why we can’t have broadband everywhere in this country if people will just invest and there is no incentive to invest if you are going to get it for free,” Dr Burgess said referring to the ACCC’s continued threat of regulation on their infrastructure.
Telstra, he said, was not going to take any more unfounded criticism from the ACCC and gave a strong warning that they would continue to battle with the ACCC.
Dr Burgess was highly critical of previous government’s policy on broadband claiming the coalition had no other telecommunications policy outside privatisation. He even went so far as to suggest that Labor’s broadband policy was one reason they won the 2007 election.
Meg Parkinson, Deputy President of the Victorian Farmers Federation, challenged Dr Burgess on Telstra’s level and quality of maintenance of equipment in rural areas claiming this was the number one complaint of VFF members.
Ms Parkinson said the complexity of issues around improving reception in rural areas remained “whether it’s the handset or the user or where the towers are. There are so many criteria that can be a problem that it is very difficult to sort out,” she said.
Dr Burgess responded by saying that people need to appreciate the weather conditions that Telstra face in their maintenance of lines and that it is not in Telstra’s interest to fail to respond to their customer’s problems.
Telstra, he said, was the only company investing in rural and regional telecommunications infrastructure and he personally had been to 54 communities since the start of this year to hear about the communication needs of rural people.
“If you see an Optus truck in the bush its either lost or stolen,” he said of their main competitors under investment in regional infrastructure.
“We don’t manage against what the government wants, we don’t manage against what the regulator wants, we manage against what the consumer wants…we are gonna always do what the customer wants,” he said.
Ms Parkinson said while the assurances of Telstra and the government was encouraging a number of concerns remained for the VFF.
“We want to see that everyone has a fair chance of getting a telephone service and access to broadband equivalent of what they would get in the city” she said.
