The Federal Court ruled yesterday that Telstra misused Optus' confidential information for its own marketing purposes in the 1990's.
It is more historical evidence of why Telstra should be separated as canvassed in the government's regulatory reform discussion paper of 7 April 2009
Optus executive Maha Krishnapillai
Optus had claimed that Telstra's wholesale division had between 1993 and 2000 passed along Optus' confidential long distance traffic information to Telstra's retail division. With this information, Telstra used it to prepare market share reports and carried out marketing and advertising attacks in the long distance call market. Such attacks were used to "lure" Optus customers back to Telstra.
The traffic information included the number of calls made, the source of call, the destination, duration, time, kind of call and value. The sharing of this information breached the telco's access agreement with Optus, meaning that Telstra could track the success of Optus' marketing campaigns.
Telstra denied in the hearings that it used Optus' traffic information to prepare the market share reports and had only used the record of aggregate traffic information, which it said was its information and didn't breach the access agreement.
But Justice Edmonds found that Telstra acted in breach of its agreement with Optus and was liable to Optus for its breaches. Optus said it would now look to ascertain the extent of Telstra's breaches and would be seeking damages.
"This is another example of anti-competitive behaviour from Telstra. And it is more historical evidence of why Telstra should be separated as canvassed in the government's regulatory reform discussion paper of 7 April 2009," Maha Krishnapillai, director of Optus Government and Corporate Affairs said in a statement.
Telstra did not respond to requests for comment.
Interesting that a lot of this occurred before Telstra was privatised, while still Government run! Also interesting, mostly while Blount was CEO (Switkowski was also there as CEO towards the end) and not Trujillo.
Although with the current structure it is easy and typical of Telstra to do this, let's not be naive enough to believe the others don't have moles and aren't collecting data on their competitors, including Telstra too.
Optus being a reseller would have the same info about their competitors/wholsale customers! So who knows what they do with that info? Why do you think TERRiA fell apart, when it came crunch time?
This is probably why the NBN bidders didn't want their bids made public and why Telstra put forward a bogus bid.
Telstra have again clearly shown how easily an unscrupulous company can misuse information. No company wants their opposition, easily gathering sensitive info about them, although I'm sure, they all do so!