Stan Beer
Monday, 13 April 2009 10:11
Business IT -
Technology
Page 1 of 2
On the day
of the $43 billion National Broadband Network announcement last week,
NZ Telecom-owned service provider AAPT joined the chorus of plaudits.
The next day AAPT's CEO was on national TV slamming the NBN and FTTH
as economically unviable. Are the AAPT views concerning the NBN valid
or is it just another can't do telco?
AAPT
describes itself as Australia's third largest telecommunications
company and its CEO Paul Broad last week was keen to add its voice to
the almost universal shouts of joy coming from all sectors of the
Australian telecoms industry - except perhaps a few unsuccessful
tenderers.
It almost seemed as if AAPT might have had a change
of heart from its stance of open skepticism about the economics of FTTN
and FTTH and was making an attempt to jump aboard the gravy train.
However,
AAPT, which pulled out of the NBN bidding process last year, claiming
that it couldn't come up with a model to make it pay, went right back
to its negative contrarian stance the very next day.
According
to Paul Broad, it's OK for our Government to invest in infrastructure
for our underserviced and black spot areas. However, fibre to the home
(FTTH) or even fibre to the node (FTTN) are a waste of money and not
needed.
Broad told the
ABC Lateline program that
Australians don't need FTTH and that existing copper is fine. He
claimed that consumers will have to pay $200 a month for use of the NBN.
"I just don't think that people'll are going to pay double for something they don't need," said Broad on the ABC.
CONTINUED Page 2
LATEST HEADLINES FROM YOUR IT
