Tel due to political sensitivity. Senator Alston's recent comments about boosting the powers of the ACCC to deal with access disputes are at odds with his comments on the demise of One. Senator Alston defended regulation of the industry, saying it brought lower-cost phone calls to consumers. Analysts argue that One. Tel, similar to the price wars initiated by airlines, aimed to undercut Telstra and CWO but lacked a solid business plan.
Estimates suggest One.
Tel bought local calls wholesale from Telstra for about seventeen cents and sold them for fifteen cents. Seventy cents in every dollar revenue went to Optus for the use of its network. As a result of deregulation, Senator Alston said, prices had come down quite dramatically, giving consumers significant benefits on both long distance and local calls, which were down from about twenty-five cents per minute to fifteen in many instances. However, in this respect, Senator Alston fails to recognise the link between regulatory practices, which ensure a cheap wholesale rate to competitors, and the inability of self-regulation to achieve such aims. On the one hand, he recognises the monopoly position of Telstra, the local loop as a bottleneck, and the slow meditation process through the ACCC yet fails to link those issues with the demise of a telco competitor, and the predicted demise of many other small players.