"Telcos are to the economy what railroads were to the 19th century and maybe what airlines were to the 20th ... building this great big capacity for things to be transferred." John O'Sullivan, CEO Optus

Particularly looking at railways in NZ where a share-holder driven company rode the infrastructure down to where the State has a $NZ300M bill to bring it back to scratch. An expensive lesson that hopefully teaches a wider lesson about structural seperation and how it is possible for the commons to own an infrastructure and let multiple service providers operate over it.

The other aspect of John's analogy is, "Where's my car?" Private ownership of self-drive automobiles provides a lot more passenger miles than railways.

And finally, last September I was musing that the next paradigm for telecommunications would be the ocean, Optus's CEO thinks the age of rail still exists in telecommunications. Our timetable, our services, no choice... sorry, when I look at the shabby glory of the Wellington Railway Station, I don't think it still holds that significant a place in the whole transport story.