Telstra's former chief executive Sol Trujillo has suggested the federal government's $43 billion fibre-optic broadband network plan may come to nothing.
Departed former Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo has called Australia racist and claimed that the local economy had only become "developed" in the last decade.
Telstra has sent out a letter to selected businesses and government officials to inform them of what is going on in the National Broadband Network process and bring its bid into the spotlight.
Telstra said today that it intends to invest $300 million this year to upgrade its hybrid fibre coaxial cable to 100Mbps, with Melbourne to get the upgrade first, which is due to be completed by Christmas.
Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo has shrugged off the potential financial effects of being excluded from the National Broadband Network process, saying that in a "perfect" scenario, Telstra only stood to lose $1 to $2 billion from its annual revenues.
Paul Fletcher has seen two sides of the telecommunications industry. First as an advisor to Senator Alston, the communications minister under the Howard Government, then he headed Regulatory Affairs for Optus. So what insights can he provide on the industry over the last decade?
Virtually everyone in the telecommunications industry has their say in the Senate Standing Committee's public hearing into the pending legislation to split up Telstra, in this week's Twisted Wire podcast.
Like many, I expected Telstra's dismissal was inevitable, given that it had openly flouted the NBN's guidelines and attempted to bend the process to its own wishes. But who would have expected it so soon?
Fair is not what the National Broadband Network tender is about; it's bloodsport, and a fight for survival, and a challenge of the wills, and all the other sorts of superlatives you might expect from an Olympics announcer.
What many of us may have forgotten is that there is already a perfectly acceptable technology for delivering triple-play services voice, TV and data over a single cable and doing it cost-effectively and at high volume.
Sol Trujillo has, not for the first time and perhaps not for the last, ignited a furore, this time over his charge that Australians are racist. While his broader comments mischaracterise a country generally welcoming to people of different cultural backgrounds, there is also some validity to them when it comes to the way he was treated during his stint here.
This morning, Telstra executives are limbering up behind the scenes as they get ready for their big yearly showing to shareholders at the annual general meeting.
Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo will leave Telstra in a better position than when he arrived in 2005, but his successor will have to manage plenty of difficult legacy issues.
The story of how Telstra lost its network is one of hubris and bungling, of misreading the play in Australia by men from the US who thought they knew everything already. Shareholders should never forget this.
It is clear that Trujillo's frenetic period at the helm of Telstra is drawing to a close and he is likely to be gone (of his own volition) before the end of the year.
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Has New Zealand's smiling assassin delivered?
The long-awaited separation of Telstra
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