NBN design for end users should start now, says Deloitte

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 17 September 2009 12:25

IT Industry - Strategy

Deloitte says that Senior Australian technology, media and telecommunications executives interviewed in compiling its report, "felt that it remains incumbent on the wider business community to examine the impact of a FTTH network on 'traditional' operations and to immediately start planning."

It suggests that, in planning for NBN applications and usage Australia should look to overseas experience.

Deloitte worked with BT on many of the regulatory and strategic challenges in establishing Openreach – the standalone, independent wholesale company created in 2006 – as well as the functional separation of BT's retail, global services and wholesale business. And it say "The Openreach experience is relevant due to its similarities with the Australian situation: the roll out of a high speed national broadband network involving the functional separation of wholesale and retail networks (a possibility being considered for and by Telstra), in an English-speaking, common law society, with similar industry characteristics."

It suggests that drawing on the UK experience should extend to hiring some of the large number of experienced BT personnel recently retrenched. "It must also be noted that Australia's NBN Company could significantly benefit from the opportunity to employ, or use as contractors, some of the experienced engineers among the 15,000 employees retrenched from BT's services unit in May 2009. While care must be taken not to 'give away' jobs within our own economy, experienced engineers who have worked at BT and Openreach would help mitigate the technical risks associated with the NBN."