Australian government tells Telstra to split up... or else
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Sep 15th 2009 4:41PM
posted Sep 15th 2009 4:41PM
Australian giant Telstra is being given the ol' Ma Bell treatment this week, getting slapped with a breakup order courtesy of the government with a steep penalty for failing to comply: blockage from future spectrum acquisitions and a forced sell-off of its cable television business and its 50 percent stake in satellite operator Foxtel. We're no MBAs around here, but that certainly seems like a strong-enough motivator to get moving on a logical breakup of Telstra's many businesses, including Australia's largest wireless provider (and largest everything, come to think of it). As a final warning, there's a threat of a AUD $10 million (about $8.6 million) fine for anti-competitive misbehavior, so all things considered, Optus and Vodafone should be feeling pretty good about the situation at the moment.[Thanks, John]
Give them about 15 years and all the pieces will be put back together minus one or two; you'll have either a Duopoly or a Oligopoly
Is this punishment for them showing how misguided the governments filtering plan is?
Dang! I don't really know how I feel about this but it does seem drastic, maybe something else is going on as well that we don't know about?
It's about bloody time the government did something about Telstra. Thanks Ruddy. :P
AGREED! Telstra deserves this. Their monopolistic ways have made me very angry for some time, and have hindered competition in Australia.
Anyone that thinks this is a bad idea is either a shareholder or an idiot.