Of course any stats put forward by Telstra are probably a complete fabrication. Telstra's arrogance exists due to its century long tradition of government backed monopoly resulting in a drain on Australia's resources and misallocation of capital on such a scale it defies imagination. It is par for the course for Telstra to now be seeking funding from US taxpayers/consumers. (PS. I heard the same figures you quote below being bandied about here about a week or so ago.) Bill Stewart writes:
According to an article in today's Mercury News or SFExaminer, Telstra has also decided that 70% of the bits on US-Australia Internet connections are now going from Australia to the US rather than the earlier ~100% US->Australia direction - so it wants a major reevaluation of who pays for the trunks connecting the Internets in the two countries (currently Telstra pays most of the costs.)