Nationalise Australia's Telcos

What it says in the title.

Seriously, telecommunications, especially broadband, isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. It's what used to be called a "common carrier service," back in the days when a landline phone was considered an essential service and carried government guarantees. Telecom Australia wasn't expensive because they had no competition, they were expensive because successive govenment ministers were funded by international Telcos, so they artificially priced the service for low probablity disaster contingencies.

I used to work there when "the debate" about privatising telecommunications was taking place. It wasn't a debate, it was a skilled market manipulation. Prices didn't come down because Telecom was sold off as Telstra, into a competitive market. They came down because of major advances in technology, in exchanges, in network systems, etc. We wuz conned.

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