As a rural Australian I am concerned that the sale
of Telstra will result in a company with an attitude of dollars first and people
second. Things are bad enough now, not that our basic phone service is an issue,
it is quite reliable and we can achieve an internet speed of 28800bps, which
many remote customers would kill for. City people are unimpressed by these
numbers.
Our real concern is infrastructure, our copper line
is "full" and to fit new customers onto our exchange they are being "doubled
up", despite this, and the patchwork of repairs to our aging copper there
appears to be no upgrade of our line in sight. Also our exchange which will not
support ADSL is apparently not going to be upgraded.
This all very disappointing for we can see that if
it can't be done now it will be unlikely to be done when economic decisions
become the sole driving force behind investment.
We are very concerned that more sparesly populated
areas do not offer the same economic return on investment that can be achieved
in the higher density city areas, this will obviously lead to reticence of a
privatised company to invest in these areas, this is economic fact. We can see
that there is potential for a privatised company to differentiate prices to
rural customers in the future to cover their increased "costs". We are already
seeing this in our electricity prices, and it concerns us that we will see this
practise across more services.
Thankyou for the opportunity to contribute to this
committee
Russell Roberts