Alison Dellit
Once upon a time, this country had a telecommunications system that was, mostly, designed to put us in touch with each other. It didn't make megabucks, but that was okay, because we didn't need it to. We weren't bombarded with animals and "free people" in telco ads, because we didn't think that freedom came through a phone line. We had a system that was owned, and run, by one boring public company that had a simple mandate: provide a service to the widest number of people possible.
This mandate influenced pricing policy: we had to pay more for STD calls, but line rental was kept low, so that everyone could afford a phone. City folks paid more than their service cost so that those outside the city could actually talk to each other. We didn't have enormous call centres, but we had a directory assistance service that would tell where the nearest open chemist was at 1am — and never hung up on you.
The explosion in telecommunications services in the last decade has improved Australians' lives enormously, in particular the growth of mobile phones and internet access. But the fact that the cost of such technologies has rapidly fallen has obscured the fact that the corporatisation, and privatisation, of Telstra has actually made the service less efficient, and definitely less equitable.
In order to rake in its record profits, Telstra has, with parliament's permission, almost trebled the cost of line rental over nine years. It has halved the number of working pay phones in just five years. Even worse, however, is what it hasn't done. While broadband prices fall in the city, in 1999, 55% of rural Australians could not get access to dial-up at 14.4kbs. While Howard promised in 2001 to ensure that all Australians had at least 14.4kps dial-up, as of 2003, he had not succeeded.
We could do so much with centrally planned telecommunications — by spreading around the money that is now thrown at wooing high-use customers between different telcos (and duplicating infrastructure), we could guarantee everyone, including remote Indigenous communities, high-speed internet access, for example.
There is a reason that most Australians want to keep Telstra public. A fully privatised Telstra, with over 60% market share, will have even less reason to look after the "customers" whose services are more expensive, but who have a lower capacity to pay. It will be less equitable, more money-hungry and, in the end, hamper us from becoming what we could be — a really connected society.
From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
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