Cornered!
Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.

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Technology news and Jobs arrow Cornered! arrow Coonan's doublethink on regulating for FTTN
Coonan's doublethink on regulating for FTTN E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Tuesday, 03 April 2007
Communications minister Helen Coonan has managed an amazing verbal sleight of hand in her condemnation of the ALP's position on the regulatory issues surrounding an FTTN rollout.

In an address to the Comms Day summit, Coonan acknowledged that any of the proposals currently on the table: the ALP's G9 and Telstra's all required some regulatory change: access to Telstra copper and other facilities; protection from overbuild etc. She managed to roundly condemn the ALP for its position, but glossed over the fact that her government is in pretty much the same boat.

"Does anyone know what Labor means when it says major regulatory and legislative reform is required?" she asked, rhetorically, before providing a quite ludicrous answer: "I assume they mean they will abolish the telecommunication competition laws."

She then acknowledged that "Both Telstra and the G9 rightly require an adequate commercial return on [an FTTN] build, where an investment of this magnitude is fraught with risk." And that "[the G9's] proposals for a fibre to the node network are based on fundamental regulatory conditions. Firstly, the builder will need access to Telstra's existing nodes and exchanges to connect its fibre. In addition, the builder will require access to Telstra's 'last mile' copper network that connects homes to the nodes and then force Telstra to use the network. Secondly, it would require legislative intervention to prevent a competitor overbuilding in the same manner of the cable wars debacle of the early 1990s."

She then claimed that "the only explanation from Labor on what is being contemplated is this answer from their spokesman to a question from a journalist at the Press Club, I quote: 'We will say, tell us what regulatory reforms you need. Now, G9 may say, look, we need an overbuild clause, so that Telstra, if they were not to get it can't, you know, build us around like they did famously in '98 when they did the pay TV roll-out. Now that would be an ambit claim.' Even the most ardent supporters of Labor's proposal would hardly call this a deep piece of thinking on how to tackle the complex regulatory issues."

 
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Cornered! - Telecoms blog
Cornered! is a blog on all things tele-communication from the perspective of one who has observed, analysed commented and reported on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition).