They’ve... seen Telstra’s share price, right?
This has been going on for a while, but a hazy memory suggests there have been shenanigans afoot regarding cash compensation for the damage done - that could cause all sorts of gyrations in the share price. At any rate, the market has become so political I wouldn't read too much in to Telstra's share price without having a detailed understanding of the situation. The board is not in control of the political process.
Telstra sold the copper network to NBN in 2014. And NBN isn't replacing that network at all. They are still using it for FTTC, FTTN and FTTB which will make up the large bulk of the NBN rollout along with HFC which they acquired from Optus.
And it's widely known in the industry that Telstra is positioning itself to potentially buy back the NBN given they recently split the company into two: Retail and Operations.
FTTC and FTTB don't use the much of the copper network at all: the only copper cabling in FTTC is between the end-user's premises and the small underground pit on every block (a very short stretch for vectored VDSL2 signals at 100 Mbit/s duplex). FTTB is fibre optic cabling to an apartment building, so the only copper cabling there is within the building.
(Side note: From my past research, FTTC with vectored VDSL2 seemed like a great cost-effective technology: leveraging a small amount of pre-existing copper cabling to save digging up every garden in Australia to install the final few meters fibre-optic cabling, with the optional upgrade path to full FTTP being allowed to be done at any time into the future, if a households willing to pay for the upgrade.)
Because what NBN is finding is that the last bit of copper is actually responsible for a lot of the problems. And so even though FTTC for example should be seeing significantly better results than FTTN in fact it isn't the case. So much so that NBN is looking at whether to go into people's houses to fix up the wiring.
FTTC is definitely a better option than FTTN especially since with G.Fast you are able to attain 1Gbit/s speeds.
It's at the Network Boundary Point (NBP), which varies from premises to premises.
Free-standing houses that are more than 5-10 years old, it'll probably be the first socket. For newer houses, there's a NBP that's either on the side of the house, or near the edge of the property.
For Strata / Multiple-Dwelling Properties, it may be a Distribution Frame.
Way back in the 90s, before Telecom Australia became Telstra, the ownership of all the internal wiring (defined as anything from the NBP onwards) was transferred to the owner of the premises. This was part of the competition stuff - allowing competitive bids on builds for wiring new premises, business, etc.
Yeah, hence the big cash payout. 2014 is associated with the peak share price by 1-2 years, so they might have been given a big cash infusion, share price jumps, returned it to the shareholders slowly over a couple of years because they specialise in network maintenance which is no longer a competitive advantage.
> They are still using it for FTTC, FTTN and FTTB which will make up the large bulk of the NBN rollout along with HFC which they acquired from Optus.
My parents house was connected to the NBN, their copper landline was disconnected, as was everyone on their street (they had no choice in the matter). And FTTC, FTTN and FTTB all involve ripping a lot of copper out of the ground to be replaced by fiber.
I've already had my NBN connection out for a whole week due to a failure in the copper.
Except that this was routinely broken meaning the entire telecommunications market was constantly distorted. It really was the worst of all worlds.
For example, the T2 float in 1999 was done at about $7.50. It took until about 2014 for the dividend yields to stack up enough that when combined with the share price, T2 shareholders could break even in nominal (not real) terms.
Telstra's management, given its position of advantage in the Aussie telco industry, has been a shambles for a lot longer than the NBN.
I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to get the order cancelled and my money back. I gave up with that.
And went in to a Telstra owned Telstra store and politely but sternly demanded my money back by asking the managed to call his escalation point(s) until he found someone who could authorise the return of my money.
After half an hour he was asking me to leave and I repeatedly said "not until I have my money back". I wasn't being threatening at all, rather I was pleading with him to understand my position.
He picked up his mobile and said he was dialling the police.
That's how Telstra treats it's customers.
He’s being replaced as consideration for a settlement agreement with the SEC.
It seems likely Tesla chose Denholm because they have a bad PR problem, and it will be difficult for media companies to portray her as a villain.
Telstra is widely regarded as the worst company in Australia to deal with as a residential customer.
Consumer-facing vilification in US media isn't really about what the person has done or what kind of person they are, it's more about what form of caricature can be depicted of them based on racial, gendered, and political stereotypes.
Denholm doesn't fit into a category of race, gender, and political affiliation that easily lends itself to a villainous caricature, and to the contrary does fit into such a category that would make it broadly unacceptable to consumers for a media company to create a villainous caricature of her. In other words, if a media company attempted to do so, it would damage the media company's consumer brand instead of Tesla's. This creates a disincentive protecting Tesla from attacks from media companies (all of which have a great financial interest in oil and legacy automakers, and very little financial interest in Tesla).
This is an increasingly common consideration for organizations responding to or seeking to preempt PR issues, especially for publicly traded companies with consumer brands, and other frequent targets of the media companies (such as police departments, private health insurance companies, and educational institutions).
And she was the CFO so she isn't responsible for customer service.
But she is easy to cast as an ‘insider’, which is not what many thought ‘an independent Chairman’ meant. The cynics might suggest that Tesla chose her because she is less likely to rock the boat.
He is being forced out due to legal issues, I don't think it's a statement from the board against Musk specifically