Singtel, Telstra Show Where Priorities Lie

It typically is instructive when any business decides to get out of its legacy business entirely, or give up its monopoly.

Few remember it, but Rochester Telephone, an independent telco operating in Rochester, N.Y., once wanted to get into the competitive long distance business badly enough to trade away its local access monopoly, breaking itself up into a "wholesale" infrastructure company and a separate retail entity that bought network service from the wholesale company just like any other competitor in the market.

Choices made by SingTel and Telstra also indicate where those companies see the tradeoffs.

SingTel decided to give up its local monopoly in the same way Rochester Tel did, in exchange for freedom to deploy its capital in other international markets.

Telstra has essentially sold its network assets to the wholesale-only National Broadband Network in exchange for rights to bid on Long Term Evolution spectrum.

The similarities? All three have given up their historic businesses to pursue growth other ways. For Rochester Tel, it was the unregulated part of the business. For SingTel it was expansion offshore. For Telstra it is mobile.

Big bets. They also show how companies are having to work at growth strategies.

National Broadband Network is that to achieve the plans goals, the NBN was essentially forced to purchase all of the Telstra network infrastructure. Telstra, who is the largest Internet provider in Australia was originally a government owned entity that was privatized in the late ’90′s and early millennium. Telstra believes that the future is in wireless and they have agreed to sell their entire network to the NBN for $11 billion and the rights to bid on precious LTE spectrum.

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