Australia - Telstra puts pressure on the competition

Synopsis

As we predicted in our Telecoms Investment Research Note in October last year, Telstra’s Project New has been a great success for the company – and not just financially. For the first time since the Telstra Country Wide era in the early 2000s Telstra customers are making positive comments about its new products and the competitive prices that the company is putting out in the market.

In the final analysis telecoms access is a mass market product – a vanilla product. The survivors will be the largest companies and those who can differentiate themselves through better customer service and better products; however very few of the telcos can rightfully claim to belong to that second category.

Telstra has now put the industry under pressure. It is winning customers back by lowering prices, and through attractive bundle offers. The consequence of this is lower margins and ARPUs for all the players in the market; but Telstra is claiming the highest growth, with its overall revenue increasing to a greater extent than that of many of its competitors.

There are still issues with regulation, especially in relation to the broadband wholesale prices during the transition period.

Key developments:

FttH, DSL, IPTV, ARPU, mobile, mobile broadband, LTE.

Companies covered in this report include:

Telstra, FetchTV, Apple, iiNet, TPG, Internode, Primus, NBN Co.