WA Govt's 10 year, $1b plan for better broadband

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 09:53

Business IT - Networking

The Western Australian Government intends to funnel its entire annual telecoms spend of $100 million to a single supplier under a 10 year contract the winner of which will be required to build a broadband network that will provide access to all Western Australian residential and business customers.

Premier Alan Carpenter said Western Australians deserved reliable, high-speed and affordable broadband access, no matter where they lived. "Currently, many Western Australians have broadband access of up to 512 kilobits per second, well below most other OECD countries. The strategy aims to increase this significantly, with speeds of 10 megabits per second likely to become available in the initial stages."

The State Government currently spends $100 million on telecommunications each year and this money "will be pooled together and offered as a 10-year, $1 billion contract to facilitate the installation of the State-wide broadband network by the private sector."

A competitive tender process for the contract will be undertaken early next year and the successful tender will be required to build a broadband network "that will provide access to all Western Australians and industry."

"Communities such as those at Kununurra in the far north, the outer Perth metropolitan suburb of Kalamunda, or the Wheat belt community of Kukerin, will be expected to have the same access to this new privately-owned purpose-built broadband network as those in the city," the Premier said.

Science and innovation minister, Francis Logan, said the strategy was based largely on the telecommunications model successfully implemented in Alberta, Canada.