Alston must face up to his 'con job' over the Telstra monopoly

And so it would appear that the minister has deliberately created a national telco infrastructure monopoly to increase the value of Telstra, single-handedly reinforcing the virtual telco monopoly in this country. He has done this instead of looking after the interests of all Australians.

So now he should face the consequences. Having created this de facto monopoly he should be obligated to regulate in such a way that Telstra cannot misuse its monopolistic powers. And structural separation is the obvious answer - a solution which, by the way, is also favoured by the OECD, the European Union, ACCC and Australian Competition Council.

If the minister flatly rejects all of the available options to establish facilities-based competition then I would like to hear what he intends to do to address the issue of facilities-based competition, earmarked by him as one of his key telco policies.

It has become obvious that the absence of competition between platforms (telecoms, broadcasting, cable TV) will mean less growth in network modernisation, broadband uptake and the development of new innovative services.

In a recent address Fels indicated that the level of regulation - based on access regulation - was achieving nothing in addressing structural industry issues such as the competition between platforms and the dominance of Telstra across telecoms, cable TV and content.

I recently put forward the view that Telstra was carefully designing its strategies for interactive services over the cable modem network and the ADSL network so as to ensure that there wouldn't be any competition that could upset the company's vested interests in the copper-based network.

Fels was naturally a little more guarded, and said only that Telstra could use its market power to gain leverage and use its powers to shut out competitors.

He used the following examples. Cable modem penetration on the Telstra cable TV network is a meagre 3 per cent and downloads on the ADSL network are limited to 1.5Mb, making it impossible to use these services for video-based services and thus protecting the Foxtel network.

With Fels gone (from July 1) I have lost a trusted ally in championing telecommunication competition in Australia. Alston's latest con job, together with the departure of the good professor, constitutes a double blow to that goal in the future.