The best solution is to create the right regulatory environment to allow Telstra and others to siply get on with the job. There should be a national outcry over the fact both the Government and the Opposition want to spend our money to subsidise broadband providers when the industry is perfectly capable of looking after itself - if only it were given that chance. Instead we have the national carrier weighed down by regulation being prevented from investing and bringing super high speed broadband to the majority of this country. The amount of money Telstra originally sought to complete its National Broadband Plan now looks like being p*ssed up against the wall by a minister who seems determined to play Ms Post Master General 1968. At least the engineers in the old PMG would have had a national target before they started spending our hard-earned dollars. Congratulations for kicking off this important new discussion.

In his little down homely chat that goes by the name of "sticking your head where the sun don't shine" or something similar, Dr Burgess responded to questions in such a way as to suggest he isn't interetsed in any model that sees other service providers sharing a true broadband network with him. He used the rather simple description of suggesting that it would be like the Government telling Qantas and Singapore Airlines to share their routes.

Pity that it is such a bad example - cause guess what neither of them owns any airports. They both are planning to land the new super-jumbo airbus at Australian airports. And those airports are making the investment in wider stronger runways and new airbridges etc in return for future landing fees.

So I think the best way is to explore new models that recognise that the access network in an all IP world is just as simple as the electricity, gas and water distribution networks. We can have lots of service competition based on the value adding platforms which we bolt to a common access network. The kinds of telco execs who don't get this are the same telco execs who believed the capacity of the internet was doubling every hundred days - till they realised it was just a WorldCom memo.

PS I also would like to review the definition of "investor". You know that no one has been asked to "invest" - i.e. at risk new equity that actually buys anything - in the PMG/Telecom Australia/Telstra since 1959. All the "investment" (new capex) has come from cashflow or borrowings. We shouldn't confuse the buying and selling of shares (share trading) with investing. Sure the owners of those shares through the Board make a decision on whether to take cash out of the business or re-invest it.

My vote - take the cash out and look to a new funding model for a common access network - if Telstra agreed to be a customer it could be funded at a much lower cost of capital than Telstra requires.

Remove telstra's monopoly on the lines to the exchange. This is biggest stumbling block to broadband services. Let all players then be equal in providing services with government holding controls on the lines and exchanges.

I suggest that Telstra or any other company that feels comfortable doing it just engage in discounting and provide cheaper prices to Australia. Oh sorry...I forgot- the ACCC and the Government and Telstra's competitors would call that anti-competitive behavior. My apologies to all!

To start with perhaps Telstra could release ADSL2+ services as from what I have read it has far better transmission characteristics that ADSL 1 and as a consequence greater transmission range, at least then those on the current threshold may get some joy. As for me, I live half way between Sydney, Australia's largest city and Newcastle, Australia's largest Non Capital city and still have no broadband joy, in fact Telstra told me my line is so bad they are surprised my voice service works, beg's the question, what do they do with that line rental money, it's certainly not spent on line maintenance. So you see, they have more issues than just bandwidth to the bush, thay can't even supply broadband to plenty of places in the main population centers on the East Coast.

I think the only way to get Telstra to act on broadband would be to make it a declared service as they obviously have no intention of doing anything in a hurry unless they get a return to their monopoly provider status. At the end of the day the Government should wear the blame for the state of things, their eagerness in the past to rip cash and divedends out of Testra is why their was little investment but as usual our teflon coated politians will walk away unscathed and I'll keep typing away on my fantastic 21st century dial up connection, don't tell me about ISDN as I can't bring myself to pay more money than ADSL for an inferior service.

It's easy, just spend the money that Telstra charges us for useing unreliable land lines that never get fixed, and all the money that SMS brings in with mobiles. Spend that on broadband all over Australia, and you would have money left over.Of course the Telstra CEO's might have to have a cut in their pay packets.

The first issue is that broadband is not available for a good part of Metroplitan Adelaide. Well in my electorate of Boothby we are told including Satelite Broadband only 95% of the electorate is covered and this is in the metro area. Why not provide at least hotspots to those areas that the old copper wire does not allow broadband?

I have unlimited broadband and speed is 256kps I pay close to $60 per month and I must admit I have had many many drop outs. However the speed is not up to standard that other countries enjoy yet we have the widest area of free space.

Our charges are very high as is the profit that telstra is reporting regularly. The cost of line rentel has been enjoyed by telstra for years and years with ninety nine % of customers have never called upon the provider to repair. Therefore one can only ask "what are we getting for our hard earned money" surely the profit should be istributed fairly, the majority of money is used for commercial purposes rather than the domestic community that has paid religiously for years and years.

With business using automated response has surely increased the profit that the telecom provider makes because one is charged for calls by time and the time that it takes to get connected with a real person can take 10 min and more and if one puts down the telephone before connected to the person they intended the call for due the the time factor, are charged for the call useless call. Is that not unfair collecting of fees.

bring back the good old telecom that was friendly and less frustrating and less expensive. Telephone Bills were 3 monthly now because the amount that is collected the bills are monthly and the telecom have the cheek to charge fee for being late in paying. Where is the fair play. So please increase the speed to fall in line with the countries less fortunate than ours but have faster useage.

I have recently changed from dialup to 512/256 ADSL2 broadband. At times it works quite well but at other times it seems that it has no advantage over my old dialup connection. I have a 1 gig download limit per month which I have not yet exceeded.

Australia does need faster internet services BUT Australia MUST NOT GO DOWN THE BPL( broadband over powerline)route to get this service. BPL has the potential to totally disrupt the entire radio spectrum from about the 160m band through to the 6m band. This would virtually wipe out ALL radio communications services that reside in these bands, both civil & military. This would also be contrary to the existing laws on causing interference to other radio spectrum users.

Yes, Australia does need much faster broadband services, but NO BPL. It is a flawed technology that we MUST NOT implement.

Raise the fees for Telstra's competitors use of Telstra infrastructure then cross subsidise broadband infrastructure. As a shareholder I am aware of the fact that Telstra cannot keep subsidising its competitors with bellow cost supply of infrastructure hurting both the share price and the ability of Telstra to provide much needed infrastructure upgrades and maintenance.