More on Telstra

With things being so slow on the DE front I commented twice on Telstra's nowwearetalking "thinggy" yesterday, here and here.

Both were on the theme that this wasn't a Government action, but a Telstra action and that shareholders should start examining the decisions of the Board. My observation is that there has been a decided shift on the site - the punters are starting to think the proble might be management not Government.

That leads me to the speculation doing the rounds that the Telstra management and Board carefully planned all this. That they wanted to be seen to be helping but intentionally failed to fulfill the mandatory requirements so they could go Government bashing.

Sounds like a great theory and fits our Machiavellia view of Telstra. But it doesn't fit the facts, including that Telstra did submit the SME plan on 4 December (no need to do that if you want to be excluded), and the tunderous response from Trujillo is more reminicent of a spoiled child than simply an affronted exec.

This perhaps gives the lie to the widely held beief that Telstra are great strategists. They aren't really. As a General you don't need to be a great strategist if you outnumber the enemy 100 to 1. What you need is good tactical discipline that the forces deploy as directed. Finally Telstra might be meeting a force that matches them.

Finally, I wonder how come no one has wondered that it is ONLY Telstra that has a cash flow to fund this investment. In the economics trade they call that a monopoly rent.