Michael Pascoe writes:

With Telstra’s share price hanging on
various competition rulings, the market might be interested to know CEO Sol
Trujillo will be telling an American audience next month everything there is to
know about his Australian broadband
rollout. One trusts Senator Coonan knows what it will be by then.

Sol – a frequent international traveller by
anyone’s standards – is down to speak in San Diego on May 15
at something called “Future in Review”. Well, with so many Australian
government policies based on “back to the future”, Sol probably thinks he’s
picked up enough of our culture to fit
right on that platform.

The program shows a half hour slot starting
at 8.30 am: “Australian
Broadband Rollout”: A conversation with Sol Trujillo, CEO, Telstra; hosted
by Lib Gibson, Corporate Advisor, Office of the President, Bell Canada (BCE).

I guess that would be the rollout we’ve
been told all depends on what the government is prepared to do for Telstra.
There’s no point talking about the existing rollout – by North American
standards, it barely qualifies as ‘broadband”.

Meanwhile, back on the Australian battlefront, the ACCC has whacked Telstra
with another competition notice “just hours after its chairman Graeme Samuel described negotiations to end a
stoush on the regulatory framework as ‘constructive’”. Wonder what he would have done if talks had
been deconstructive.

And Telstra has replied this morning, defending its wholesale
pricing for the basic line product, offering this advice to Graeme: “Telstra believes that the ACCC’s
intervention in this very competitive market is unnecessary and only serves to
create uncertainty for wholesale customers and their pricing.”