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Telecommunications Media Q&A with Conroy over Telstra NBN exclusion
Telecommunications Media Q&A with Conroy over Telstra NBN exclusion | Media Q&A with Conroy over Telstra NBN exclusion |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Monday, 15 December 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 4 QUESTION: If you were a shareholder of Telstra, would you have - would you at the moment be questioning the competence of their management?Featured Whitepaper
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I couldn't suggest to you what is the basis of it. And if I was a Telstra shareholder, I mean you'd certainly be looking for an explanation. I understand the chairman of Telstra's done a press conference today, I haven't had chance to see a transcript of it yet. But I mean those are questions that people should be putting to the board of Telstra and the management of Telstra. QUESTION: One thing Sol said today was that they've got other options. They can build faster networks. Their statement says that they can build wireless services at 14.4 or even 21 meg, which is faster than the fibre network you're proposal - proposing. STEPHEN CONROY: That's just not right… The laws of physics say that's not right. QUESTION: So are they misleading people? STEPHEN CONROY: No. Graeme Samuel requires - and I think if you read it carefully you left a word out. Graeme Samuel requires - the ACCC has required proponents of wireless, and even ADSL2+ on copper are required to use the words “up to,” because the great difference between a fibre optic network and a wireless network are that a wireless network is a shared network. It's about the laws of physics. The more people using the same wireless tower, the slower the speeds. A fibre network is a dedicated point-to-point not divisible - it doesn't matter if you join - you live next door to me and you log-on to your computer, it doesn't diminish my speed and it doesn't diminish your speed. If we live next to each other and we're both using the same wireless system, the speeds slow. It's about the laws of physics. So claims about the speeds of wireless should always be tempered by the two facts, the two laws of physics, which are immutable. They're not Stephen Conroy's laws, they're not Nick Minchin's laws, they're not Sol Trujillo's laws. And with a wireless product, as soon as more than one person uses it, the maximum claim speeds immediately are reduced. So you can claim I can deliver 14, or I can deliver 21, or LTE in a few years can deliver 50 - but that's providing you are standing underneath the tower at midnight, and you're the only person using the network. Those are theoretical speeds in a laboratory. They're not real-world speeds. You should always ask when it comes to wireless products, what's the average deliverable speed? QUESTION: Is access to Telstra's existing infrastructure needed by the eventual winner of this project to satisfy - for them to build it? STEPHEN CONROY: Yeah, look, the question of access to Telstra's existing network has been the matter of some legal dispute recently. In fact, Telstra decided to take this matter all the way to the High Court. They lost three-nil in the full Federal Court about an access regime, and they lost seven-nil. Now, as you know, the great dissenter has announced his retirement. But even Michael Kirby joined the other six members to say that when Telstra purchased the network, they purchased it with an access regime in place. Get used to it. QUESTION: But you have no concerns that they might move to now block access to… STEPHEN CONROY: Look, the Government is intent on building a national broadband network which we believe this country desperately needs, and we've been well aware of potential legal threats from all sides in this debate, all along the way. We have set down an open and transparent process. We have not budged. We have not changed the rules for any of the parties who are claiming various concessions, and that is on both sides. We've said, here's our process. We're going to go through our process. So we're determined to get our outcome. And we are well aware of all the potential legal loopholes and arguments along the way, and we're prepared for them. QUESTION: Telstra [Indistinct] awarded this [indistinct] to some other bidder, and you have to start [indistinct].. STEPHEN CONROY: Well that's… look. I can only suggest that not all the networks that are being proposed according to the newspaper reports have the same configuration. So there are some proponents who have minimal use of Telstra's infrastructure, from what I've read in the newspapers. As I said, I haven't had a briefing yet, so I can't absolutely confirm that. So the question of compensation with Telstra, it doesn't come up at this stage. It comes up after the Government makes a final decision, if that's the direction we're going in. But it's a hypothestical, I know everyone would like me to try and give a definitive position on those questions, but that would predetermine the outcome being considered by the expert panel. So questions of compensation and access regimes, all those things are going to be very very cheap to the actual discussions that have taken place so far and the next six weeks of the expert panel. QUESTION: Are you confident that the network can be delivered without Telstra, and is this decision to exclude Telstra a vote of confidence in the other bidders? STEPHEN CONROY: Well as I said, the decision to exclude Telstra is based on legal advice by the expert panel, so it's not a vote about anything. It's based on sound legal advice. If we didn't believe anybody else could build the network, we wouldn't have bothered going through this process. I mean, Telstra announced that they'd won the tender before the tender was even formally opened, and Telstra have maintained consistently over the last six to eight months that they're the only ones that can build it. If we believed that one company was the only one, unlike Senator Minchin who in his press conference today just says, look. You can't do it without Telstra is, you just, cancel the whole thing, and give it to Telstra, and get on with it. Well, that was the position he had in Government. So we've got back to the future with Senator Minchin. No new policy from Senator Minchin. He just lapses back to build OPEL, which failed its own test of deliverability, which is why it was cancelled; and let Telstra do what they want, and work with Telstra. So we've actually set up an open and transparent process to create competitive tension, because that's where the previous Government failed miserably. They had 18 broadband plans over the last 12 years of Government. And the country's still in a broadband mess. And they - last week, I think he announced that they're now going to spend $100 million every year on rural telecommunications. I mean, it's just the 19th pork barrel. And they're even trying to pork barrel from Opposition. That's just trying to placate the disunity that they got into over the communications fund. So no, we wouldn't have engaged in an open and competitive process if we didn't believe someone else could build the network. The questions - and answers - continue on the next, final page. Please read on. |
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