Bill to separate Telstra backed by Google Australia

The latest reform steps that have been laid out for the telecommunications industry by the federal government and were released recently, have been given the full support of the internet giant, Google Australia.

The new legislative measures that have been designed to increase competition within the telecommunications market would be great for users of the Internet and would help in the deployment of the forthcoming National Broadband Network according to the Australian arm of Google. Over the next few weeks the Competition and Consumer Safeguard Bill, which has been regarded by many as quite controversial will be ready to go to a senate vote and this support from Google could seriously help things along for the bill.

Although Iarla Flynn, the head of public policy and government affairs at Google said that the telco bill was definitely a step in the right direction she did not go as far as giving full support for the structural separation of Telstra.

In a recent interview he said “I don’t think we’ve waded in, in terms of identifying particular players or naming names. I think our interest is more what’s happening in the market and what’s happening with users. And any step you take which introduces more competition, that gives users more choice, we think is a good thing. I think generally we would be pretty supportive of the thrust of the government policy. The NBN is a big part of what [the government is] doing, and we certainly support that.”

For an ‘open’ internet and for broadband customers Flynn said that a competitive market would be the ‘best insurance.’ He advised “We have one player who is pretty big, who has a pretty strong market position, but I think that the policy steps government has been taking with the NBN and with the other regulatory and legislative policies they’ve announced seems to acknowledge that issue.”

He went on to add “The story of the NBN is very much around open access and promoting competition. I think from our point of view that is the most important thing – rather than getting bogged down in specific regulatory rules, if you’re going to have a competitive market that [open access] is probably the best insurance for users and the best insurance for the open internet.”

Source – Commsday