Conroy confirms NBN decision "just weeks away"

Stuart Corner
Friday, 13 March 2009 06:19

IT Industry - Market

Communications minister Stephen Conroy told the Senate during question time on Wednesday that a decision on the NBN was "just weeks away".

He was also questioned by shadow minister Nick Minchin over a recent claim by Optus that "the cancellation of OPEL was a lost opportunity...Almost 900,000 premises across rural and remote Australia were to have been delivered metro-equivalent services at metro-comparable prices [and] many of those premises would have been receiving services now."
 
Minchin said: "Senator Conroy refused to acknowledge that OPEL would be in its final months of completion while Labor's NBN is still a long way from even delivering its first services...Because of the contempt Labor has shown for rural and regional areas by cancelling OPEL without any alternative plan in place, Labor must now commit to any broadband services commencing in underserved rural and regional areas first."

He may be trying to pre-empt the NBN announcement here, increasingly the word is that rural and regional will be the initial target given the large, recently-installed base of DSLAMs in metro areas.