The Senate inquiry into the Telstra sale bill has exposed the Howard Government’s claim that the network be “future-proofed” as a complete scam.
Telstra is still installing cheap ‘line splitting’ equipment in rural and regional Australia despite it halving dial-up internet connection speeds and blocking ADSL (broadband) services.
In short, this means that rural and regional Australians will be forever burdened with sluggish internet access and will never have any chance of getting affordable broadband.
These facts emerged in evidence provided by CEPU representatives of Telstra’s technical staff.
Telstra have previously denied this equipment was still being installed, telling a Senate Committee in August:
“The short answer to your question about the [line-splitting equipment] is that we are actually no longer deploying [it]. We have stopped that. We do not buy them anymore. They are not manufactured anymore.”
This outrageous arrogance by Telstra also defies Estens recommendations which said that Telstra had to come up with a plan to fix the problem presented by the extensive use of line splitting (pair gain) equipment: a problem that affects over 1.2 million Telstra customers.
The Howard Government claimed to have accepted these recommendations – what a scam! Telstra continues to play by their own rules with the Howard Government guilty of a shameless “futureproof” con of rural and regional Australians.
The only thing that is future proof and guaranteed about the Howard Government and Telstra is they will continue to lie and trick Australians into thinking selling Telstra is a good idea!
Media contact: Adina Cirson ‑ (02) 6277 3334 or 0418 488 295
