Telstra CEO's 1995 Strategy Paper: "No (copper) PSTN by 2010"

Sources for my quote on Telstra planning to have replaced it's Copper Customer Access Network by 2010. Quoted in http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2013/09/19/3851924.htm.


The original ASX PDF's for tls834 & tls835 (transcript), 19-Apr-2012, were locked and without copy/paste, I didn't quote. Corrected below.

My comment needed single quote, (') meaning 'intent', not double (") implying a word-for-word copy:

http://stevej-on-bband.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/nbn-speeds-will-always-be-lower-under.html
republished as:
http://nofibs.com.au/2013/04/29/coalitions-10-nbn-cost-save-locks-us-out-of-massive-upside/

That is why in the early 1990's Frank Blount, then Telstra CEO, planned, and is on record as saying:
"we expect to have replaced the (entire) Copper Customer Access Network by 2010".

http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/download/document/tls834-investor-update.pdf page2

We are already moving to an all data world. We have been predicting the ultimate decline of PSTN for over a decade. In a strategy paper written in 1995 by Frank Blount, we predicted that PSTN voice revenues would be zero by 2010! What’s different with the NBN is that Telstra is going to be paid to decommission its copper and HFC broadband networks.

https://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/download/document/tls835-investor-update-190412-transcript.pdf Page 4

When you talk about an all data world, what that means is everything goes digital. Your voice used to be analogue; it goes digital. That's not new. I was going through some old papers the other day of Frank Blount's, who some of you would remember Frank. It was a strategy paper from 1995. Now, this may show how we don't always get our forecasts right, but we expected PSTN to have gone away by 2010.

Update. 25-May-2105. Other reporting.

Telstra living every bosses' dream as taxpayers pick up conversion tab
19-Apr-2012, John Durie, THE AUSTRALIAN

Mix of good and bad for Telstra shareholders
John Beveridge, April 20, 2012, Herald Sun

The third and final benefit was the interesting admission from Thodey that a 1995 issues paper by then chief executive Frank Blount had predicted that Telstra's copper fixed-line revenue would hit zero by 2010. 

That predated the longevity boost of ADSL which allowed reasonable internet speeds over copper but shows that Telstra is doing very well by getting paid by the government to update its technologEarly in 2010, Telstra announced the creation of a $1b "fighting fund"y.

Telstra investors will get their reward
also as
As copper comes a cropper, Telstra sees there's gold in them thar hills
Malcolm Maiden, April 20, 2012, SMH & Brisbane Times.

Telstra's first foray into fibre to the customer
Stuart Corner, 10-Mar-2008, ITwire

The year was 1992 and Telstra, or Telecom Australia as it was then known, was proudly launching its fibre to the home pilot project, LaserLink. My report of that event read:
"Leo Tyrell, executive general manager of Telecom's Commercial and Consumer Division, said that Telecom expects to have fibre laid to street corner pillars serving about 60 percent of metropolitan subscribers by 1995. However the costly last link to subscribers is only likely to be offered if there are sufficient services available to make the proposition economically viable."

... just days after The Australian had reported, incorrectly that
"In recent months, [Telecom] announced its domestic fibre product and claimed it would have fibre to 60 percent of all homes in Australia by 1996".

Blount confirmed plans to serve metropolitan areas by fibre up to remote integrated multiplexors to be supplied by Alcatel Australia, but added:
 "if anything else was said about taking fibre all the way to the home I haven't seen it...Don't write that we're putting fibre to the home. That's not true. We're not going to do it and there's never been any plans to do it. I don't care what you've read there have never been any plans to my knowledge to do it. Nobody has ever spent any money saying we're going to put fibre to the home."

Well that was pretty definite and a Telecom corporate affairs staffer later suggested that the division responsible for LaserLink had "oversold" the concept of fibre to the home.
Not so: the original press release announcing LaserLink described it a "the name for all (Telecom's) activities involved in providing optical fibre capabilities to the business and home."
 And John McCarter, manager customer access network planning in Telecom's Commercial and Consumer Division, was quoted saying:
 "The challenge of the 90s is to move the potential of optical fibre right to customers' premises."