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Cornered! For backhaul don't compete, co-operate, says Telstra
Cornered! For backhaul don't compete, co-operate, says Telstra | For backhaul don't compete, co-operate, says Telstra |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Wednesday, 27 May 2009 | |
  
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"Telstra estimates $250 million in funding, if allocated solely to extension rather than duplication, could connect 140 communities in Australia to the high-capacity, national transmission networks, removing barriers to deployment of high speed fixed and mobile communications," Telstra said. It added: "Some of these communities are the most remote and isolated in Australia. It could lead to improvements in service delivery by local government, health, education and emergency services, and open up new opportunities for regional business, industry and tourism. Schools and health services in remote areas that are today cut off from broadband-based programmes could have access to metropolitan standard Government services." Sounds tempting doesn't it? It would win the government lots of brownie points with voters. And Telstra has, very helpfully, provided "a list of potential communities that could benefit from fibre transmission extension." In fact it is more than a list. A great deal of the submission is devoted to detailing the plight of many of these broadband-starved communities and the specific gains each would enjoy. So what about those routes on which Telstra presently has a monopoly and on which the Government, and other submitters, believe artificially high prices are stifling competition in access services? "There is potential for the Government to provide lower transmission prices by either purchasing capacity from Telstra's existing network and reselling it at a subsidised cost to access seekers, or by acting as a demand aggregator and negotiating on behalf of interested access seekers," Telstra says. And if the Government is not tempted by the Telstra carrot of being able to take the credit for delivering fibre backhaul to places it presently does not reach, then Telstra is prepared to wield the stick. The introduction of competitive backhaul could actually see prices for end user services rise! "Competitive neutrality policy requires government owned businesses to provide a commercial return on their investments. On this basis, dividing existing demand in a low population area across two pieces of infrastructure could realistically result in higher rather than lower prices." And as for the supposed high prices for regional backhaul that are the genesis of this whole scheme, those, says Telstra, are a myth. "While there has been much public comment on transmission prices in regional Australia, there has nevertheless been a high degree of commercial agreement on the pricing of the service. To date, the ACCC has not been required to make any transmission pricing determinations due to the high level of commercial agreement reached on the pricing of the service." So let's just scrap the whole thing and leave Telstra to do the job, shall we?
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