Optus & Elders bid for all of Broadband Connect

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 20 December 2006 00:33

Business IT - Networking

Optus and Elders have launched a joint bid believed to be for the entire pot of funding in the Federal Government Broadband Connect project, promising to offer improved services to 2.7 million households and businesses in regional and rural Australia.

They are proposing to build fixed wireless broadband access networks in several hundred locations around Australia able to deliver broadband services to an addressable market of over two million household and businesses, over 700,000 of which presently receive no sustainable broadband service.

They say that, if the broadband wireless network is funded by Government, it will be supplemented by the installation of DSLAMs into selected Telstra exchanges in bands 2 and 3 (urban and regional) delivering ADSL2+ services at speeds of up to 20 megabits per second. Locations will be announced only if negotiations with Government are satisfactorily concluded.

The bid also seeks funding to build substantial trunk transmission capacity to overcome what they say is "the competitive barrier long represented by the incumbent's [Telstra's'] backhaul charges."

The two announced their partnership in late August and a separate wholesale agreement  under which Elders planned to retail Optus existing services including Internet (dial-up, broadband and satellite), long distance and mobile, and launched its resold Optus broadband service offerings in September.