Some interesting reading amongst the 80-odd submissions received and recently made public by the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, as part of the regulatory review and tender process for Australia’s future broadband network.

As expected though, most big industry players (excluding Telstra) call for some sort of separation between wholesale and retail arms of organisations providing the network.

Equally as expected are Telstra’s thoughts on the matter: -

Telstra believes that calls for operational, structural and ownership separation are a noisy, hollow distraction from the main game.

I’m guessing by main game they mean how Telstra is going to be able to continue using its size and market dominance to ensure that Australian’s keep paying too high a price for sub-standard broadband speeds.

Personally, I feel Carolyn Dalton, Head of Government Affairs & Public Policy - Australia & NZ at Google, gets it right in her post over at the official Google Australia blog.

You can check out the details yourself, but basically she says Broadband speeds are critical for developing Australia both economically AND socially so we need to ensure that structures are put in place to ensure that the current situation doesn’t repeat itself.

Word!

Now that the obvious has been stated, can we get round to fixing things please?