G9 progresses FTTN plan, promises access from $12-$24 per month

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 22 April 2007 17:02

IT Policy - Regulation

The G9 consortium - AAPT, iiNet, Internode, Macquarie Telecom, Optus, PowerTel, Primus, Soul and TransAct - has lodged a draft special access undertaking (SAU) with the ACCC for its proposed fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network, setting an average price for access seekers of between $21 and $24 per month.

The G9 says this reflects the cost structure of a range of products from basic access at $15.00 to high speed broadband (12 - 24Mbps plus) at $45.00. The ACCC is expected to review the draft SAU and provide comments to the G9 over the coming weeks. The G9 would then lodge a final undertaking and the ACCC would hold a public consultation process on it.

The G9 is proposing that the SAU would apply for 12 years from the commercial launch of the service "in order to provide investors with appropriate long term certainty in relation to return on this significant long term asset."


"This draft SAU is the culmination of months of discussions and negotiations with G9 members, financiers, policy makers and the ACCC and demonstrates the seriousness of the consortium's proposal," Ravi Bhatia, chief executive, Primus said. "Our focus will now be working with Government to fine tune the regulatory arrangements to support our proposal while the ACCC considers the draft SAU."

Earlier this year the G9 set out the changes that would be needed. The core of the G9's FTTN proposal is that there must be only one FTTN network for it to be economically viable. In practical terms, this means that if the G9 FTTN were to be rolled out then all Telstra's copper access pairs in an area serviced by one of its nodes would be cut over to that node. Telstra would then gain access to its own network by becoming an access seeker customer of the G9 network. Not surprisingly Telstra has rejected this idea outright.

Telstra spokesman, Rod Bruem, dismissed the draft SAU as "just the latest act in the year-long charade. Fictitious prices for a fictional network dreamed up by the Optus PR department." He said "the starting point should be estimating how much they will pay Telstra to take over it's key asset."