Gov't's rush to FTTN: commit in haste, repent at leisure

Stuart Corner
Monday, 18 June 2007 17:00

Opinion and Analysis

The Federal Government has confirmed that it will call tenders for an FTTN network, but surely this is pre-empting other possible solutions: the tender should specify the desired outcome in terms of coverage, access speeds and rollout schedule rather than technology.

Announcing the plans today, communications minister, senator Helen Coonan, said: "There are currently two commercial proposals for a new high speed fibre network in metropolitan and major regional areas with speeds of up to 50Mbps—one by Telstra and another by the 'G9' consortium."

She went on to say: "Unlike Labor's un-costed and poorly detailed proposal, this new super fast network is fully costed, Australia-wide and reaching many Australian homes and small businesses within a matter of months. Labor's plan is five years away and Australia simply can't afford to wait until 2013 for Labor's broadband plan to be turned on."

Hang on a minute! Where is the Government's equivalent costings to those of the ALP, scant though those may be? The only organisation claiming to have a fully-costed plan is Telstra. G9 has costings, but less detailed than Telstra. How can you call a tender and claim the project is fully-costed when those costings come from one of the bidders?

This will clearly no ordinary tender! The Government's announcement of the tender contained four 'break-out' text boxes. The first, and the smallest, said: "The G9 plan does not require taxpayer funds. It will be independently financed."

Box two was generic: "FTTN will be one of the largest single private sector investments in Australia's history and one of the largest network upgrades in the world." And then the statement went on to say: "The Government will be going straight into the competitive bids process and will make a decision on who will build the network and get the legislation underway as soon as possible." How can they highlight the scale of the project in once sentence and them emphasise speed rather than thoroughness?

Boxes three and four were all about the Telstra plan: "Telstra wants to build a high-speed broadband network to put Australia back where we belong. And it won't cost the Australian taxpayer a single cent." And: "Telstra needs no money from Canberra to build the world's leading broadband network."