Featured, Opinion, Telecommunications - Thursday, January 12, 2012 16:57 - 154 Comments

Blackmailing NBN Co works best through the media

opinion Over the past week a rather pathetic little game of bluster, bluff and ultimately light blackmail has played itself out in Australia’s telco sector as a handful of Australia’s major ISPs have done everything in their power to demonstrate just how self-interested they can be when it comes to exploiting the National Broadband Network.

This game — let’s call it Quigley’s Hold’em, or perhaps Dalby’s Five DSLAM Draw — probably kicked off, as most such shady efforts do, late in the week, perhaps as the shadows of last Friday night were drawing near and the weekend, with all its inherent vices, began to beckon the players away from the clear sunlight of honest dealing.

At the time, the head negotiators from most of Australia’s major ISPs — at least including iiNet and Internode, but likely Telstra and Optus as well — informed the National Broadband Network Company that they were not planning to sign the comprehensive wholesale agreement which it had labored with them for some 15 months to develop.

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