Government gears up to spend yet more on rural comms

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 26 June 2007 07:24

Opinion and Analysis

It remains to be seen how these vastly increased speeds will be achieved, but you can't increase speeds in the access network without sufficient capacity in the backhaul network, or without paying that backhaul provider to carry all the additional traffic.

So whatever recommendations this new expert committee comes up with, it's a fair bet that a fair portion of that $400 million will end up in the pockets of Opel. This will be in addition to the initial $958 million which is supposedly being matched by in kind contributions to a similar value but of which there is yet no indication as to how these will be valued.

You can do an awful lot with $400m. To put it into some sort of perspective: $500 million is what Optus says it will spend converting its entire GSM network to 3G at 850MHz and $380 million is what it quoted to take that network's coverage from 96 to 98 percent of the population.

If the Coalition gets in again, by the time it is next up for re-election it should have rural Australia well and truly onside as enjoying broadband coverage that's as good and as cheap as any metro area. And by the time it is next up for re-election who knows how many more communications initiatives the Coalition will have dreamed up, if it maintains its track record of 17 in the past five years.