Telstra outage caused by high tax rates. By Jared Lynch in The Australian.
In March, the communications regulator ignored almost everyone, except the rattling of the government’s big piggy bank, to impose a $7.3bn tax grab on telcos via spectrum — that thin air that mobile networks operate on — renewals.
This was up from an earlier assessment of $5bn to $6.2bn. Telstra argued that renewal price tag for the whole sector should be capped closer to $3.9bn.
Why? That money has to come from somewhere, and telcos which are experiencing stagnant revenue growth have two choices: hike prices (which Telstra already did in May) or trim back on capital expenditure and network investment.
The latter is the more palatable but more dangerous option. …
You can’t tax your way to prosperity, nor can you tax your way to more resilience telco networks.
Look at what others are doing to solve the problem:
Many countries in Europe have woken up to this, while our antipodean leaders are still rubbing their bleary eyes.
For example, Portugal has renewed key mobile spectrum rights for up to 15 years for free, demanding new coverage obligations in hundreds of under-served parishes in return.
France granted licence renewals without fees, after operators agreed to an accelerated 4G rollout and guaranteed nationwide, high-quality coverage. …
The technical landscape has changed:
The triple-0 model was originally designed for the fixed-line Telstra copper network, which provided resilience via battery backup in exchanges even during power outages.
But the rollout of the NBN and the migration to mobile networks has undermined this resilience, and shifted the burden to mobile operators without clear, government-mandated standards for investment in redundancy and resilience. …
Data centre baron Bevan Slattery says … “mobile operators have never signed up to providing 100 per cent uptime and the continual pile-on every time there is an outage is making the ability to attract talent and investment incredibly difficult.”
Make a law to stop the tide coming in, Canberra. Or change the weather a hundred years from now.
There are no members of Federal Parliament with science or engineering degrees, except for Malcom Roberts (One Nation senator from Queensland) and Zaneta Mascarenhas (Labor MP from WA).
Btw, there is only one member of Federal Parliament who has been thrown in prison for political activity. Pauline Hanson, the leader of the only populist party, speaking for policy positions that 80% of us want.