Telstra takes aim and blows ALL its feet off, yet again.

Alan Parkington <parkingtona@team.telstra.com> wrote:

> From
> http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/...941336752.html

> The telco's amigos are playing a high stakes game with the Federal Government on regulation

And is absolutely guaranteed to lose on that, regardless of who the govt is.

Labor will go even further than the coalition and break up Telstra.

> but, as Matt O'Sullivan reports, the strategy could backfire spectacularly.

It has done already and is absolutely guaranteed to get much worse in future.

> 'What are my friends Sol and Phil doing now?" quips Tom Friedberg in a jocular American twang almost as soon as he
> hears a foreign accent on the other end of the phoneline.

Fucking up even more spectacularly than they have ever done before.

And thats no mean effort given how spectacularly they have fucked up previously.

> The ex-United States telecom director turned consultant is referring to Sol Trujillo, the maverick chief executive
> guiding Telstra through its biggest upheaval,

Pig ignorant lie. What Blount did was MUCH bigger.

> and his external headkicker and mouthpiece, Phil Burgess.

His arsehole, actually.

> The best pals have astounded everyone since arriving in Australia almost in tandem more than two years ago.

Pigs arse they did.

> Not so much for their plans to transform Telstra from a branch of the public service,

They didnt do that either, Blount did.

> but for the unrelenting - and often personal - attacks aimed at changing the rules governing telecommunications.

And they didnt get even a single one of them changed in their favour.

> No one has been spared the Americans' spray, be they rival executives, competition regulators, senior politicians,
> industry chieftains or journalists.

Yep, footshot after footshot after footshot.

> The high-risk strategy has come at a cost.

Yep, no one takes any notice of the fuckwit yanks and
the govt deliberately shafts telstra every chance it gets.

> The lines between the ex-boss of the regional telecom US West

Which was called US Worst for a reason.

> and the Federal Government have been severed, leaving even senior Telstra confidants dumbfounded by the American
> management's desire to wage a political campaign right up to polling day.

Yep, hardly anyone can believe that those fuckwit yanks can actually be that stupid.

Those that arent aware of their previous history, anyway.

> "For someone whose tenure was predicated on political astuteness to get to the top of US West, it seems that he and
> his retainers are
> politically tone deaf," says Friedberg, a director at US West's
> cellular division in the early '90s who worked alongside Bill
> Stewart, another of Trujillo's mates ensconced at Telstra. "He might be fundamentally right from an investment point
> of view but he has played it wrong. And Phil is the sort of guy who likes throwing napalm on the misfire - it's almost
> like a Mad Max movie."

Yep, and that fool Trujillo was actually stupid enough to appoint him.

And the board is actually so stupid that he wasnt given the bums rush LONG ago.

> Telstra's multi-pronged fight to preserve its near monopoly is unprecedented in Australian corporate history -

And its absolutely guaranteed to lose that when NO ONE
that matters politically is EVER going to give them that back.

> and, for that matter, almost unheard of in the US. Trujillo has given Burgess free rein to use almost any means at his
> disposal to rally shareholders and customers to Telstra's cause.

And none of those are buying the lies.

> But where's the success? Telstra might have scored brownie points in elevating broadband to be a big irritant for the
> Government ahead of polling day,

They didnt even manage to do that.

In spades with the hordes that have broadband already.

> but it has failed in almost every regard to foist change upon it.

Not almost, EVERY.

> Instead, it has left investors wondering what tools it has remaining to leverage deals in Canberra.

Yep, and they will discover it doesnt have a single one
when the enhancement to broadband in urban areas is
announced, regardless of who the govt is at that time.

> And should Labor win on November 24, will a Rudd government alter legislation to be more favourable to Telstra and its
> 1.6 million shareholders at the expense of 20 million consumers?

Corse it wont. Its labor policy to break up telstra.

> To date, Telstra's board has presented a united front at the behest of Donald McGauchie, its steely chairman

Its fuckwit incompetant chairman, actually. So stupid that it couldnt
even manage to recruit a viable replacement for Ziggy or stop the
damage the fuckwit yanks have been doing since they showed up.

> and former confidant of the Prime Minister.

He was never that.

> But the cracks have started to emerge in recent months with the sudden resignation of director Belinda Hutchinson.

There's always been massive cracks in the telstra board.

> "It astounds me, privately," says an investment banker of Trujillo's strategy. "For Sol, 'This is just a war of
> attrition and we will fight as long as we have breath in our body'.'

Or until he gets the bums rush when the board eventually wakes up
and smells the coffee, when its FAR too late and the govt has fucked
over telstra very comprehensively indeed, regardless of who forms govt.

> At first glance, Solomon Dennis Trujillo's emergence from obscurity in the outlying suburbs of Wyoming's capital,
> Cheyenne, reads like a rags-to-riches story.

Only to a fuckwit journo.

> Records describe him growing up in the 1950s as a "white boy"

Pig ignorant lie. He's a mex, fuckwit.

> whose father, Solomon M. Trujillo, worked as a truck driver for a house-moving company and as a railroad worker for
> Union Pacific. His mum, Theresa, toiled as a clerk and "assistant cashier" at a corner store. A pupil of St Mary's
> Catholic School, he went on to the University of Wyoming where he gained an MBA and met his future wife, Corine.

> But it would take him more than two decades to climb the ladder at US West

And have it called US Worst for a reason.

> to become boss in 1998 and earn the title of "America's top Hispanic businessman".

All that proves is how hopeless the rest of them are.

> The riches have flowed freely since, as he earned directorships on the boards of Bank of America and PepsiCo,

You wouldnt know what 'riches' were if they bit you on your lard arse, child.

> the latter position explaining his penchant for Gatorade and PepsiMax and loathing of Coke.

Yawn.

> Today, King Sol personifies the archetypal American businessman,

Nope.

> earning the right to live the high life that has seen him circle the globe in corporate jets and dine at the finest
> hotels.

So does everyone else, fuckwit.

> Although his tenure at the helm of US West Inc lasted less than two years,

Yeah, he was such a spectacular dud.

> Trujillo did not hold back from lashing out at regulation before he sold the Baby Bell in 2000. From the headquarters
> at 18th and California streets in downtown Denver, he complained that regulation handcuffed the company while allowing
> rivals to "cream-skim" its best customers.

And didnt actually get a damned thing changed.

> Now, almost a decade after calling for US regulators to "let the marketplace work", Trujillo is humming the same tune
> to a bemused audience on the other side of the world.

He aint humming, fool, wanking, actually.

> This time, Team Telstra is playing a more high-risk game, taking on a
> government and regulator in what analysts describe as a no-win battle.

So does everyone else too.

> Its tactics range from polling shareholders and offering them
> tool kits for tips on calling talkback radio, to taking legal action
> against the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan.

Which its lost, every single time. And will do again, time after time after time.