Optus porn role exposed - does Singapore Telecommunications know?

SingTel owns Optus in Australia, the continent's second largest mobile phone company. Optus now provides more than half of SingTel's revenues.

Optus has a little secret that might not be known too much - the secret is a "highly lucrative business based on internet phone pornography lines that has been exposed in a Supreme Court judgment against the nation's second-biggest telecommunications company."

Let's copy the whole article:

"Optus acted as the middleman in the trade of internet porn from Vanuatu to the US and Europe. The company also hosted computers in its Australian data centres from which Gibraltar-based porn merchant Gilsan served graphic sex photographs and videos directly to its mostly US and European customers.

In doing so Optus is understood to have generated tens of millions of dollars through a deal which included Telcom Vanuatu. Under the arrangement, the porn traffic was diverted through the Vanuatu telco, which kept US10c of its $US4($5.15)-a-minute global call rate. The balance was split between US telco AT&T, Gilsan and Optus.

The set up came to light after Supreme Court judge Robert McDougall found against Optus in an action brought by Gilsan three years ago.

Justice McDougall found last Friday that Optus had under-reported the number of minutes Gilsan's clients were on the phone to Vanuatu getting their porn. He has reserved the pecuniary judgment but the original claims in the battle were understood to be in the range of $US30million to $US40million.

Gilsan, however, will be forced to pay Optus a much smaller amount, believed to be about $800,000, after the telco counter-sued for rent from the porn merchant for housing its computers. It is understood Optus also houses computers loaded with pornography for other customers.

It is unclear how much Optus, which declined yesterday to comment on whether it was still involved in the business, and its parent company, Singapore Telecommunications, makes from such services.

An Optus spokeswoman said: "The issues in dispute go back several years and the divisions mentioned have been restructured since SingTel acquired Optus three years ago."

It is understood an email from an Optus executive presented during the trial put total revenues from Gilsan at more than $US100million, shared between all players.

While pornography is on the rise in Australia's $10.5 billion-a-year mobile phone sector, Telstra moved last year to block access to such services following complaints from customers, a spokesman said."

Now is this something?

(By Asia Business Consulting)