Telstra NBN day of reckoning beckoning at high noon

Today at noon the long suffering shareholders of Australia's dominant carrier Telstra will take the most important vote in the company's history since it was privatised. The question will be whether they want to accept $11 billion from the government to make up for it for selling off the company's fixed line copper network.

Post separation, Telstra will for all that easily be the leading, though not dominant, mobile carrier and cable TV provider for some years to come until the HFC network is forcibly shut down.

The $11 billion payout

Although Telstra CEO David Thodey has signalled openly that there are no firm plans afoot to reinvest the $11 billion payout, it is hard to imagine that the carrier will not use until further notice part of the funds to furthermore accelerate the build out of its LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) mobile network footprint, which went live in September.