Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 03 April 2007 12:45
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Communications minister Helen Coonan has managed an amazing verbal sleight of hand in her condemnation of the ALP's position on the regulatory issues surrounding an FTTN rollout.
In an address to the Comms Day summit, Coonan acknowledged that any of the proposals currently on the table: the ALP's G9 and Telstra's all required some regulatory change: access to Telstra copper and other facilities; protection from overbuild etc. She managed to roundly condemn the ALP for its position, but glossed over the fact that her government is in pretty much the same boat.
"Does anyone know what Labor means when it says major regulatory and legislative reform is required?" she asked, rhetorically, before providing a quite ludicrous answer: "I assume they mean they will abolish the telecommunication competition laws."
She then acknowledged that "Both Telstra and the G9 rightly require an adequate commercial return on [an FTTN] build, where an investment of this magnitude is fraught with risk." And that "[the G9's] proposals for a fibre to the node network are based on fundamental regulatory conditions. Firstly, the builder will need access to Telstra's existing nodes and exchanges to connect its fibre. In addition, the builder will require access to Telstra's 'last mile' copper network that connects homes to the nodes and then force Telstra to use the network. Secondly, it would require legislative intervention to prevent a competitor overbuilding in the same manner of the cable wars debacle of the early 1990s."
She then claimed that "the only explanation from Labor on what is being contemplated is this answer from their spokesman to a question from a journalist at the Press Club, I quote: 'We will say, tell us what regulatory reforms you need. Now, G9 may say, look, we need an overbuild clause, so that Telstra, if they were not to get it can't, you know, build us around like they did famously in '98 when they did the pay TV roll-out. Now that would be an ambit claim.' Even the most ardent supporters of Labor's proposal would hardly call this a deep piece of thinking on how to tackle the complex regulatory issues."
