Telstra’s Response to Network Decay Astounding Sue Mackay - Senate Opposition Whip

Media Statement

Deputy Chair of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Legislation Committee - 23 October 2003

Today's graphic revelation of a Tasmanian telecommunications network in a state of decay provoked an astounding response from Telstra.

Telstra Country Wide spokesman Noel Hunt has been quoted as saying the latest Australian Communication Authority (ACA) figures on Telstra's Customer Service Guarantee performance showed a 99.95 per cent availability of the network nationwide.

And yet these are the same figures that the ACA has since admitted are misleading. Under questioning on 7 October from Senator Sue Mackay (Deputy Chair of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Legislation Committee), the Australian Communications Authority, admitted that it had been passing off average monthly fault-free service and service availability as an average annual performance.

The ACA figures, at first reading would suggest that in Tasmania, 99.17% of telephone services were without a fault last year. However unless it was the same 0.87% of phones that weren't working for the entire year, the figure should have been at least 11.4%.

Instead of a 99.95% result nationwide the figure is much more likely to be considerably less than 90%. If the so-called independent regulator cannot tell us, who can?

Mr Hunt went on to say that the photographs of cables wrapped in plastic bags depicted repairs in progress. Unfortunately in Tasmania's case that progress often takes months or years. Telstra field staff do not have the time or resources to apply anything other than band aid fixes to the dilapidated network.

The reality is that the fixed line network is rotting in the ground and that Telstra's cuts to its capital expenditure budget and to the technical staff workforce are the cause of it. These cuts have come as a direct result of the partial privatisation and there will only be worse to come under a fully privatised Telstra.