Published on the 06/03/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Telstra has joined another former Australian government owned carrier, Qantas, in calling for its foreign ownership limits to be removed…
In a speech to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce this week Telstra CEO, David Thodey, sought to dispel the image of Telstra as a former incumbent telco and reposition it as a digital technology company, and a significant player on the international stage.
Like all former monopoly telcos, and indeed most other telcos, Telstra is heavily dependent on revenues from legacy services such as fixed line telephony that are in rapid decline, and must find new sources of income to replace these. For Telstra, this means moving into digital content services and other IT services such as cloud computing and expanding internationally.
Thodey argued that Telstra’s two main competitors, Optus and Vodafone, were both foreign owned. He was reported saying that the foreign ownership cap had served its purpose and was preventing Telstra from exploiting overseas growth opportunities.
Foreign ownership of Telstra is capped at 35 percent and no shareholder can hold more than five percent.
Thodey also argued that majority Australian ownership of Telstra would become unnecessary as Telstra lost its stranglehold on customer access as the NBN rolled out, replacing its copper access network. However with the Government planning to largely abandon the former government’s fibre to the home plan in favour of fibre to the node, parts of that network will still be essential and ownership/access agreements have yet to be negotiated with Telstra.
The scale of the transition Telstra will need to make was revealed by chief financial officer, Andrew Penn, earlier this year. He was reported saying that, in order for the new growth sectors like Asia, network applications and services and media to become ‘significant’ for Telstra they collectively needed to generate more than $A20 billion in annual revenue. However in the year to 30 June 2013 they generated only $A5.4 billion.
In his speech Thodey also pledged Telstra to adopting a ‘digital first’ strategy in its interactions with customers. Thodey said that Telstra would extensively change the way it interacts with its customers through significant investment in new digital technology over the next three years. He said the programme would deliver major customer improvements, give customers greater control over accounts, services, technical appointments, support options and product features.
“We have listened to our customers and know many of them want the convenience of dealing with us on their terms in their own time. Improving and simplifying our online relationship with them will help to deliver this,” Thodey said. “We will be looking at every Telstra product and service to see if there is a way we can provide this through digital channels as well as in-store or over the phone.”
He added: “This month, we will commence the rollout of a new, enhanced technical support model: ADSL and mobile customers will be sent a unique code with their modem or mobile device which will allow us to provide tailored information so they gain the information they need faster and with fewer contact points.”
Telstra claims to have more than six million unique visitors to Telstra.com each month – making this its single biggest contact channel. Forty four percent of Telstra service transactions are now managed online, up from 26 percent in 2011, and the Telstra 24×7 App has been downloaded more than 3.5 million times.
