Opel: phantom company, phantom network?

Stuart Corner
Monday, 21 January 2008 04:56

Opinion and Analysis

Telstra's outspoken regulatory chief, Phil Burgess was giving Telstra's pet hate, Opel, another blast in his usual colourful manner last week as Telstra once again resorted to the courts in a bid to find out how Opel last June came to get a $1 billion handout from the Government when there was supposed to be only $600m on offer. “Seven months later Opel has no management, no carrier licence, no confirmed spectrum and no settled technology platform. It is, in every sense, a phantom network offering phantom services to phantom customers,” Burgess said.

Burgess has a track record of not letting the facts get in the way of  goo story that would be the envy of most tabloid journalists. In this case one fact of which he can hardly have been ignorant is that Opel does in fact have spectrum: it shelled out $65 million earlier this month for Austar's 2.3GHz an 3.5GHz 'WiMAX' spectrum in much of regional Australia.

But on other counts, he does have a point. Every since it was announced as the winner of the Broadband Connect funding in June last year, Opel (or rather its 'parents' Optus and Elders) have been singularly unforthcoming with information. Even at and after the announcement, it was left to the then minister of communications, Helen Coonan, to do most of the bragging about what Opel would do, and how, when and where it would do it.

Even with the acquisition of the spectrum from Austar, there was no Opel press release and it was left to Austar to tell the world what a good deal this was for Opel. Austar CEO, John Porter said: “There is no doubt that Optus and Elders...are in a position to build great broadband access services in regional Australia very efficiently. With access to wholesale products from Optus and Opel...we believe we are even better placed than we would be if we were to build a network ourselves.”

Austar said it expects to begin wholesaling Optus’ new access products in late 2008. That's great, because it is more than Opel has been prepared to say about the timeframe for service rollout.

Even Opel's own executives haven't helped. Last October Peter Ferris, Optus' general manager, technology and planning, told Terrapin's WiMAX conference in Sydney that: "Opel does not exist as a technological entity at this point in time, it is only a trade mark so I cannot talk about Opel. I can only talk about Optus."