The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Anyone who doubts that the timing of Telstra's DOCSIS 3.0
upgrade to its cable network announcement yesterday was a direct nose
thumb at the NBN has blinkers on. Telstra cable already goes past 2.5
million homes and giving them access to 100 Mbps would put them in a
different league to the services the NBN could provide.
Some might say that's just a quarter of the homes
in Australia and Telstra might be too expensive for many users. Yes but
that wouldn't be the case if there was an opposing NBN network being
built.
Telstra would get extremely aggressive with its prices with an NBN
being built - great for the consumer but bad for Telstra's would-be
competitor.
Then of course, Telstra could decide to implement its own FTTN or even
FTTH network to compete with the NBN. The Government could try to stop
it but if the NBN is a non-government enterprise like Telstra, then
trying to stop Telstra from competing could be viewed as
anti-competitive.
With Telstra expressing in no uncertain terms its intention to compete
with the NBN, whoever Senator Conroy announces as the winning bidder is
not going to have much time to pop champagne corks.
Finding the backers prepared to stump up $10 billion or more to take on
Telstra on its home turf in the midst of the worst economic crisis the
world has seen in 80 years is not going to be a walk in the park.
Even Optus is only prepared to put up $2 billion at most and will need
to seek financial partners. If the winning bidder or bidders turn out
to be duds, globe trotting Senator Conroy may as well pack his bags and
join Sol Trujillo on an extended vacation.
David Bass
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