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July 16, 2005
Telstra boss a city slicker?
The Financial Review [PAY WALL] has investigated new Telstra CEO Solomon Trujillo's track record in servicing country customers and has some bad news for the bush.
Indeed, it suggests that if Mr Trujillo doesn't dramatically improve his record, it could derail the privatisation plan.
We've done a little digging ourselves, and as we've said earlier, Solomon's attitude to country areas may be better than the Fin gives him credit for. It seems clear that he's an advocate for broadband equality.
But the Fin says its investigation into his leadership of US West, the big phone company servicing the north-west of the United States, showed "rural and regional services were so poor the market regulator had to intervene to restore them".
It blames him for dividing US West customers into three categories - gold, silver and bronze - which it says "raised the suspicion that rural and low-value customers were always ranked last".
The story says some observers believe it took a class action on behalf of 220,000 customers to force US West to fix the problems, and says this will be unpalatable news in Canberra at a time when Prime Minister John Howard is working hard to secure political support in the bush for the final Telstra sale, central to his government's fourth-term agenda.
It's a fascinating story, well worth the read, but we suggest that it's far too early to be judging the man. Given some of his comments, there's every prospect that he could turn out to be an extremely wise appointment. (We'd love to be able to say some nice things about Telstra for a change.)
Posted by cw at July 16, 2005 05:23 PM
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Comments
CW,
Oh, gosh there goes a flying pig.
Posted by: jamrob at July 16, 2005 09:15 PM
hmmm
CW, how about sending this off to some National party politicians..and asking their opinion after they have read it. Me thinks this might raise the level of dissent in the Coalition in Canberra, just a tad! I for one would not like to live in the Bush
after reading all this.
Posted by: Ian Smith at July 18, 2005 08:53 AM
For old Sol I don't think it will make a difference if it's country or city. If it needs upgrading and it will cost Telstra any $$$ (regardless of whether they will make $$$ of it) it won't be done.
My conversations with Telstra recently have made this clear to me. Of course they promise they will do the upgrade in the "future" but say that it "may or may not" give me ADSL. The irony is that on their reporting it says I can get ADSL in my area (but in reality I can't)
Posted by: Nigel Percy at July 20, 2005 01:45 PM