Payphones

Its been a while since Mr Cranky got on his political rocking horse, so I figured it was time.

Telstra has announced immediate plans to remove 1000 payphones nationwide, with further plans to remove another 5000 in the near future. This is causing a flutter in the political hen house, particularly amongst the beleaguered Nationals. The government as a whole is aghast that Telstra could even consider doing something like this without close consultation with the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan.

Meanwhile, representatives of country seats, such as the popularist Nationalist Barnaby Joyce, are jumping up and down, calling for details of Telstra plan and assurances that their constituents will not be adversely affected.

But does the government really have any real justification for its outrage?

Some months ago, J’Hos band of merry marauders approved full privatization of the Telco giant with the sale of the governments remaining 51% of Telstra. Once that goes ahead Helen Coonan is going to find herself no longer the boss of Telstra and no matter what “guarantees of service” applies, I suspect the government is going to find that market forces are going to rule.

Another point of note is that Telstra board recently brought in a new CEO, Sol Trujillo , an American with all that implies with bravado, capitalist motivations and lack of respect or desire for government regulation. I really don’t think this is going to be the last of this sort of initiative we can expect to see from Telstra.

Am I surprised? Not even slightly. Even the timing is no shock. It is just an indication of Telstra increasingly feeling its independence from its government parent. It may not be of age yet, but dead cert its going to make off with dads car if it thinks it can get away with it.

Personally, I am yet to be convinced of the long term advantages of having the national telecommunications carrier and infrastructure completely in private hands. In truth, it seems to me to just spell the end of long term planning, by which I mean 10 to 50 years rather than 3 to 5.

Having lived in both Hong Kong with a giant, monolithic Telco monopoly, which was simply a mess, and the US with their deregulated and privatized nightmare, I can’t help feeling that there just has to be another way. Some middle ground.

The problem Australia has unfortunately is that we have not even acknowledged the need to look for the middle ground.