Then add the costs of advertising on radio, television and newspapers, and all the sports and arts sponsorships. Of course, I'm not denying the benefit of carrier competition. And at one time a familiar sight was Telstra's linesmen busy in their little tents playing cards for most of the day. Obviously the the efficiency of technical staff allocation has improved greatly, because now we rarely get linesmen in the street at all, even if the phones aren't working. With resellers, Telstra's competitive slant is slightly different.
Retail competition is really nothing more than a form of outsourcing of the billing process.
Resellers win customers by offering special discount plans, which can then be sold under non-Telstra names and therefore don't need to be offered to everyone by a publicly owned network. This gives the sector the illusion of competition, and allows Telstra to avoid any public service auditing on the grounds of fair pricing. It also lets it avoid scrutiny when events such as the recent Humphry inquiry examine the cost-benefits of IT outsourcing. Telstra's new idea of offering five different price combination plans, and the claim it is encouraging us to choose the cheapest, is just an internal version of what was being offered by retail competition, externally. But I guess Telstra can't afford the software.