Sprinkler dampens Telstra talks

Top executives at Telstra and vendor partners Ericsson and Alcatel came under fire this morning from an unlikely source: a rogue sprinkler system at the telco's annual investor briefing.

The system inexplicably went off during proceedings at Sydney's Overseas Passenger Terminal in Circular Quay, spraying water directly upon a large section of the audience of executives, reporters and analysts.

The deluge interrupted Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo's on-stage conversation with Serge Tchuruk, the top dog at giant French networking vendor Alcatel, although the pair largely escaped the water.

Not so lucky was most of Telstra's executive management team, with the sprinkler going off directly above the head of BigPond chieftain Justin Milne, amongst others.

Ericsson's global CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg and his team were also seated in the area, along with Alcatel's local boss Hilary Mine.

The investor day has been delayed, and will resume this afternoon in a different location.