Budde said Telstra’s claims of bias were unwarranted, and insisted as chair of the conference he was committed to fully representing their case.
“I can understand their case, I might not agree with it, but I can understand their case and we need to discuss their side of the story, but now that is not possible and that is an unfortunate situation,” he said.
Pulling out of the conference was another example of Telstra’s ‘my way or the highway’ attitude, Budde said, pointing to the ultimatum it gave the government that if any form of separation was entertained Telstra wouldpull all investment in the NBN, despite its acknowledgement of the national economy’s reliance on the NBN and its position as the most capable of rolling it out.
“Telstra’s attitude is you take our bus, or you take no bus. That’s their attitude and everybody who is against them is either unbalanced or biased. They have millions of dollars to spend on PR and it’s very difficult for people who are victims of their attack to actually defend themselves,” Budde said.
Telstra’s wholesale group managing director Kate McKenzie had been scheduled to put forward Telstra’s position regarding the regulatory framework of the NBN, and according to Budde her spot has now been filled by former Telstra employee David Havyatt.
“David is an absolute stalwart. He has been in the industry for 23 years, he has worked for Telstra and knows them inside out… to be honest I think with David there you will get a more honest, better view of what the real issues for Telstra are than if it was somebody from Telstra,” he said.
The CCC’s executive director David Forman also levelled criticism at Telstra in the media statement released yesterday, stating that Telstra had agreed to present at the event months in advance with full knowledge of the conference schedule.
“Clearly, it knows that the independent commercial conference organisers have sold sponsorship and tickets on the basis that Telstra was on the program," he said. "Telstra, let’s remember, for three years justified its abusive language about the government, the regulator, the courts and competitors by saying it wanted to create a ‘debate’. Yet faced with critics, it first tries to silence them, and then walks away from the opportunity to debate. Telstra is acting the only way it knows how – by using its market power to try to force people to do what Telstra wants,” he said.
But Budde brought the blame back to the government and the ACCC which bucked international trends by dictating the technical requirements of the NBN but left the regulatory framework up to the industry.
“It’s a sad story and it’s a pity that we don’t have a government which has the guts to come up with a regulatory regime beforehand," Budde said. "We’re all paying for the fact that the government is basically telling the industry ‘you set the regulatory rules’. No other country in the world has done that and I think it is definitely creating a worse situation in this country with this total lack of government leadership on the regulatory side.”
A Terrapinn spokesperson said McKenzie had been replaced by Havyatt
IDG will cover Broadband World Australia 2008.