Rural NBN focus has no cost impact: Quigley

James Riley
Wednesday, 20 October 2010 12:25

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The Gillard Government's promise to king-making rural independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott to make regional areas the roll-out priority for the National Broadband Network would have no impact on NBN Company finances, a Senate committee has been told.

NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley told an estimates hearing that while the company had "accelerated" its wireless and interim satellite planning, it had already been focused on the regions.

The government commitment to Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott would not increase the overall cost of the network, he said.

Responding to questions about the regional NBN roll-out from West Australian senator Scott Ludlam, Mr Quigley said: "We were (already) rolling out uniformly across the country. Which is to say were are already doing more in rural Australia per head of population."

"It makes no difference to our finances, because we were already planning to do a substantial proportion (in rural Australia,)" he said.

"But what we have done is to accelerate the wireless, and accelerated our interim satellite solution, where we have moved into a different process to '¦ give priority to regional areas."

"And we have in our latest business plan, which we will be handing to government shortly, taken into account the priority in regional areas."

Mr Quigley told the committee NBN Co had completed its corporate plan and business case, which would be presented to a board meeting on Friday for approval. Assuming the documents are approved, they are expected to be handed to Government's shareholder ministers - Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Finance Minister Penny Wong - a week later.

Senator Conroy also said the commitment to a regional roll-out would make no difference to the overall cost of the network, complaining there had been a lot of misinformation from the industry in the period after the deal with Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott had been struck.

"Firstly there has been a lot of misinformation '¦ or rather laziness on the part of particularly analysts who leapt out claiming this drastically affected the cost," Senator Conroy said. "It has no impact on the cost."

Most of the NBN Co first and second release sites were in regional Australia, he said, demonstrating the project had always had a regional focus. And the entire Tasmania NBN build was considered regional.

"If you look at the actual build construction of NBN Company, it was never an inward-out build run," Senator Conroy said.

"So almost universally the commentary on this has been deeply flawed. Either people were too lazy to actually look at where we were building."

Meanwhile, Mr Quigley said that proposals from remote communities that were currently not on the fibre-footprint but which had funding ideas to get connected to fibre would be looked at favourably by NBN Company.

Senator Ludlam had expressed concern about some remote mining towns that had been left off the fibre footprint map, and sought assurances that NBN Co would consider taking the fibre to those communities if they could raise alternative funding.

Mr Quigley said: "That was one of the reasons that we were publishing the maps and the plans early enough, so that people can consider whether they would like to have fibre extended beyond what we otherwise might do."