Volatile day for Telstra investors

Telstra (ASX:TLS) investors have traded more shares within an hour of the market opening today than any day in the past month.

The increased activity follows Telstra's announcement of an $11 billion agreement with NBN Co yesterday, which it flagged on the ASX as news that may affect its share price.

Investors reacted quickly to the news, trading a total of 104.55 million shares by 11am - more than double Telstra's three-month average of 51.23 million shares traded per day.

Telstra shares reached a monthly high of $3.23 when the market closed on Friday. Shares opened at $3.44 this morning, declining to $3.38 within the hour.

At noon, Telstra was trading at $3.37 on the ASX, with a total of 128.89 million shares traded since the market opened today.

During the following two hours, the share price hovered between $3.37 and $3.36, ending up at the latter at 1pm and the former at 2pm.

It returned to $3.36 at 3pm, dropping to a low of $3.34 in that hour. The market closed at 4pm with Telstra trading at $3.34 and 211.18 million shares traded today.

Although the closing price was 3.41 percent higher than Friday's close, it still did not reach Goldman Sachs JBWere's forecast of $3.45 to $3.65 per share.

Melbourne-based analysts Christian Guerra and Raymond Tong yesterday valued the $11 billion injection at $0.90 per share, but expected this to translate to an increase of only $0.45 to $0.65 on the market.

In a report to clients, Guerra and Tong said their $3.45 - $3.65 estimate could be depressed by investors looking to offload their shares for a profit.

The analysts expected Telstra's business model to change, with more investment in content and fixed line margins falling from 60 percent currently to 20 to 25 percent by 2030.

"Essentially, Telstra will move from being a vertically integrated fixed line provider to a retail service," they wrote.

"In our view, despite losing network ownership, Telstra will be well placed to compete in the future NBN world," they wrote, highlighting benefits of Telstra's incumbency, fixed-line and wireless network ownership, balance sheet capacity and bundling.