Lilia Guan discusses her thoughts with CRN readers.
Despite a 10 year relationship with Ingram Micro A\NZ, Telstra has decided to award the distribution of its branded fixed line products to Hong Kong-based VTech.
The decision has caused some reverberations within Ingram, as the distributor will close its communications division on 1st July.
The closure will affect 21 people and VTech Australia is in discussions with staff from the division regarding employment opportunities with the company.
Does this situation sound familiar?
It was three years ago when, Telstra announced it had signed an exclusive deal with US-based mobile phone wholesaler Brightstar to look after the telco's mobile supply-chain management.
At the time, local mobile phone distributor, Roadhound Electronics, slammed Telstra for the decision.
Roadhound Electronics' managing director Ben Sharma alleged, at the time, the contract was a "back door deal."
He also questioned the fairness of the contract, which gave Brightstar exclusive rights to manage Telstra handsets to its dealers.
Eight months after Telstra signed the deal with Brightstar, local distributor Cellnet declared a $10 million decline.
The distributor's then MD, Adam Davenport put the blame squarely on Telstra's decision to sign an exclusive distributor.
Davenport said Telstra's signing of an exclusive distributor signalled a major change in the telco marketplace.
"We had anticipated some of this impact, but Telstra's new approach has hurt sales and profits by more than we expected," Davenport conceded.
"This change has contributed to a reduction in telco sales for the first quarter by about $10 million compared to the corresponding period a year ago.
Telstra hasn't returned CRN's calls to answer why the telco chose an overseas company, as yet.
What do you think of Telstra's decision? Should the telco have at least chosen a local distributor?
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