back to article Telstra bets on a software future

Telstra has announced a new software unit it hopes will deliver revenue streams to help replace the doomed old-telco income from fixed line services – and to protect its mobile business against the threat posed by app businesses. The fixed line network, once a river of gold, is already under pressure from mobile and naked DSL …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Gag - Cough..... Scratch arse....

    This -

    "According to The Australian, the group will exist outside Telstra’s normal bureaucracy, and will be briefed to identify acquisition targets as well as develop its own apps. ®"

    Telstra - deserves to go bankrupt.

    As much as "We the Great Land of the Aussie" - our corporations are generally run by real shit heads.

    This has to exist OUTSIDE of Telstra's NORMAL bureaurcacy - because there is NO fucking way known that anything could get done within it.

    Jesus - fuck.

    The idiots bought out a phone book, with the super fine chinese postage stamp sized manual print....

    The font is SOOOOOOOO small that it's on average about 0.6mm or perhaps even 0.7mm high.....

    So the dumb fucks who thought "What a great idea it is to put out a phone book that NO ONE can read!" well in fine grey font, on a grey add, half way down on page 32 of the phone book, they offered to send out page magnifiers, to anyone who requested them....

    Just call this number.... and wait up to SIX WEEKS for it to arrive.

    An A5 sized Frenezle Lense? Nope... not a fucking chance.

    And it turns out to be a small credit card sized Frenzel lense....

    It took six hours of phone calls and huge fights and all sorts of bullshit to SPEAK to a REAL PERSON, so I did not have deal with some arse fuck recorded message....

    I asked for 4 of them - one for each member of the house hold....

    They send ONE tiny 5c page magnifier..... the lense wasn't even optically correct.

    This is just Telstra, at every step of the fucking way - throughout the entire organisation.

    Wall to wall bullshit.

  2. Magani
    Mushroom

    And after they've created it?

    "The carrier says it will spend three years building the unit."

    They will then presumably spend five minutes setting up their off-shore Hell Desk to the same useless standard as their existing one.

    Icon = reaction to ringing Telstra help in the past.

  3. stratcat

    Solution 6. Sausage software. T-Box. Telstra's Blackberry Portal. The early years of Sensis (I'm being nice).

    Telstra and app development? Really???

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Same old same old - telcos have been trying to get in on the 'value added services' act for over 15 years, have blown billions of dollars and achieved precisely nothing.

    Why?

    Because they are obsessed with delivering end-users services. Usually poorly-implemented imitations of consumer content services already available elsewhere.

    I really hope Telstra have finally learned this lesson, but I'm not hopeful.

    It''s all driven by telco execs' panic about becoming a 'dumb pipe'. I've heard that phrase in more telco boardrooms than I care to remember. Unfortunately, they seem to see the solution as end-user service provision - perhaps because this is the only thing the highly-paid consultants they employ to advise them can think of.

    A much better idea has been floating around tech-savvy telco folk for years. Don't want to be a dumb pipe? Then become a smart one instead. Make the companies that provide those end-user services want to provide them through your pipe because they get extra value. Telcos know huge amounts about their customers, and a pipe that could tell applications providers that kind of stuff (demographics, location, device, communications preferences etc) as well as provide other features (billing integration, customer service, QoS, etc). would be a real differentiator. All monetised by taking a rev share from the application providers on the revenue generated via the additional features.

    No applications to develop. No horses to back. Just do better what telcos know how to do - provide infrastructure, connectivity, billing and customer service.

    Of course, the window for making this viable is rapidly closing, and may already have shut. But just imagine if fifteen years ago, instead of building crappy content sites no-one wanted (Vizzavi, anyone?!) they had gone down this route - ideally based on some kind of common standard. All those app developers would be hooked on their smart pipes, and the telcos would be creaming in revenue, all at no risk.

    Hey ho. I look forward to Telstra launching more movie streaming / social network sharing / shopping / music / tablet / news / TV (delete as applicable) services, and then wondering why no-one wants them.

    AC because I've been knocking around Australian telcos for years, and might need a job as a consultant back there one day...

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