[ILUG] Babcock and Brown nearly defunct

[Keith Gaughan]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 11:19:41AM -0000, David Howe wrote:

> Telecoms is traditionally one of the most highly regulated industries
> because of it's requirements to have a social element i.e providing phones
> in rural areas where it is not profitable. The arguments for public or
> private ownership should be irrelevant in a well regulated environment.

It isn't anymore, and deregulation in most countries coincidentally
happened around the time that the idiotic fashion for privatising all
public companies, regardless of the public good or whether they were
already doing a prefectly good job, started back in the '80s.

Actually, the whole profitability thing *is* an argument for public
ownership, regardless of regulation. Part of the job of government is to
do things in the common good that private enterprise won't do because
there's no profit in it.

Regardless, it's Eircom the network operator, not Eircom the phone
company that I think should never have been privatised. Privatising both
part and keeping both of them within the same company frankly *damaged*
competition, giving us the worst of both worlds.

> Where was our regulator Commreg when all this was going on?

Cowering in a corner somewhere, I believe.

K.

-- 
Keith Gaughan - kmgaughan at eircom.net - http://talideon.com/ - CF9F6473
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
    -- H.L. Mencken