The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
It's very interesting indeed to hear the boss of a telco
owned by NZ Telecom telling Australians what they need and that they
already have enough bandwidth supplied by ADSL2+ through Telstra's
ageing copper network.
Apparently Broad sees building a modern FTTH
network as merely "duplicating" Telstra's copper network at an
unacceptable cost. What he thinks is a better idea is to structurally
separate Telstra, make the entire copper network open access, fill in
the blackspots and work from there.
That's all very nice in theory but, leaving aside the issues with
separating Telstra, Broad's view of what should happen has one
fundamental flaw. Australia wants - needs - a world class broadband
network and it won't get it with the existing copper in the ground.
It is the height of arrogance for AAPT and Broad to presume what
Australia's needs in the information space will look like even five
years from now let alone in 10 years.
For Broad to predict what FTTH will cost consumers (he claims $200 a
month) or that there will be no demand because of the price is highly
presumptious.
Back in 1955, Australia didn't need television but we finally got it in
1956 and boy did the need become apparent. Consumers were spending the
equivalent of $10,000 in today's currency for primitive 17 inch black
and white TV sets.
Yes, we could just sit on our existing copper to the home
infrastructure, fill in the black spots and wring every ounce of
bandwidth we can get out of it. And we could watch as Europe, parts of
Asia and the rest of the world leave us behind in the information space.
Or we can bite the bullet and just go ahead and build a world class
FTTH network and open the way for Australia to participate in entire
new industries of information delivery. It's pretty obvious which
option Australia has chosen.
David Bass
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