As a shareholder (don't ask) in Telstra I am heartened by today's words from CEO Ziggy Switkowski that "they are managing the business as best they can". This makes a pleasant change from several years of macho posturing and new economy bull dust that has infected the entire business and threatens to destroy about US$ 4 trillion worth of malinvestment in the US and a couple more trillion in the rest of the world.

Now, having written yet another dumb bunny investment in Asia down to nothing, maybe they can adopt a sensible strategy for the future. One that does not involve locking out every potential collaborator and relies for profits on exclusivity, blocking, stalling and bandwidth rationing. I want this not just because it wil.l fail in the medium term, but because without all this testosterone driven business activity we can get down to connecting the communities we live in and get on with the things that communities do, only some of which is pay Ziggy a motza to wear his suit.

Prediction, my shares in Telstra will halve again in value, at least, before they recover anything, by which time Optus/ Singtel/ Orange and the others will have disappeared because there really is no business case for more than one telco in this country. In 5 years there may be a number of service resellers, like Virgin, but Telstra, or whatever succeeds it, will be the only network operator, and probably the only service provider. And WiFi, or its successor will be how we get our broadband and a lot of our local communications services.