Queensland plans own $550m FTTH network

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 22 October 2006 17:44

Business IT - Networking

The Queensland Government is contemplating building its own fibre to the home network in Brisbane at a cost of up to $550 million.

State premier, Peter Beattie, said the cable would be rolled out in the Brisbane local government area, using state and local government assets such as pipes, electricity poles and road and rail easements.

"This project is possible in Brisbane because we have a supportive local council and State Government willing to work with the private sector and facilitate access to government-owned infrastructure to support the construction of a new network."

He added that, the project proved successful in Brisbane, "there may be future opportunities to roll out similar solutions across the rest of the state."

This rollout by regional governments and communities is exactly the model which the OECD last week noted in - its six monthly report on broadband uptake in member economies - had helped northern European nations become world leaders in broadband and, as iTWire noted, the model recommended for Australia a couple of years ago by a visiting Canadian expert.

Beattie said the Government would seek expressions of interest from the private sector to gauge commercial interest in financing the $550 million project. "This is a leading Smart State project that has the potential to boost the Queensland economy by $5 billion and create more than 15,000 jobs."

Beattie gave no indication of how these estimates had been arrived at. However, in 2003 Ericsson Australia commissioned Allen Consulting Group (ACG) to estimate the economic benefits of higher speed broadband services and ACG chose South East Queensland as the region on which to base its modelling.