Back to the future moves forward

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 10 August 2010 15:12

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

On a day when ICT returned to the election spotlight for the first time in many years the three main players today highlighted their key differences: for Labor the future's about 100 Mbps and a Telstra separation; for the Coalition 12 Mbps and an intact Telstra is just fine; while the Greens will work with whoever wins, but would rather like a publicly owned NBN.

In a debate held this afternoon at the National Press Club and sponsored by the Australian Computer Society the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy, Coalition communications spokesman Tony Smith and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam lined up to debate the national broadband network.

In his opening remarks Conroy said that a wholesale only NBN was a critical step to unleashing competition in Australia and across the region. He added that the financial heads of agreement nutted out with Telstra in June would lead to a faster, cheaper rollout of the NBN and also pointed the 'Way to the structural separation of Telstra which is the holy grail of telecommunications reform.'

Commenting on the Coalition's plans for an alternative and slower broadband network which were released this morning, Conroy said that; 'In this digital age Australia can't afford not to build the NBN. If we fail, we will pay for it for the next 20-30 years.'

Smith said that the coalition policy would deliver the nation with better broadband for a modest investment, relying largely on the private sector to roll out a network offering peak speeds of up to 12 Mbps - compared to the NBN's much vaunted 100 Mbps speeds. 'The big bottleneck on broadband has been backhaul,' said Smith. 'We will invest up to $2.75 billion to secure a second lane of fibre optic backhaul across Australia.'

He was also clear that 'we are not going to break up Telstra.'

The Coalition has not however released any map of where its network might reach. Quizzed on that issue during the debate Smith said 'We are not taking billions of taxpayer dollars without a cost benefit analysis,' suggesting that voters  could have a long wait to find out what speeds they might expect from the Coalition network if they live outside the main capital cities. 'We are not promising - this is the baseload,' said Smith.