Telstra's first foray into fibre to the customer

Stuart Corner
Monday, 10 March 2008 08:37

Opinion and Analysis

Once upon a time in a telco long long ago and far far away executives dreamed of a fibre to the home network part funded by service providers. But then along came the big bad American CEO. The year was 1992 and Telstra, or Telecom Australia as it was then known, was proudly launching its fibre to the home pilot project, LaserLink. My report of that event read: "Leo Tyrell, executive general manager of Telecom's Commercial and Consumer Division, said that Telecom expects to have fibre laid to street corner pillars serving about 60 percent of metropolitan subscribers by 1995. However the costly last link to subscribers is only likely to be offered if there are sufficient services available to make the proposition economically viable."

I also reported David Thornton, general manager sales and marketing, in the Commercial and Consumer Division, saying Telecom would be looking at entering into arrangements with service providers under which it would bill users for these services via their telephone bill and take a portion of the overall revenue.

The pair were not giving any details on what it thought the likely costs would be or on how they would be shared, but Tyrell did say that he expected the cost of installing fibre to drop below that of copper within the next two years so all new and replacement installations could be fibre after that date.

That was a bit optimistic to say the least. And costs aside, I can't see too many service providers being keen to hand over a share of revenue for what would have been, effectively a basic access service: not to mention the fact that Telecom/Telstra would continue to own the customer.

Anyhow, that little idea did not last long. At about the same time (February 1992) as Telecom launched LaserLink it was welcoming on board a new CEO, Frank Blount (another US import and a former senior executive of AT&T).  In May he addressed the ATUG annual conference, just days after The Australian had reported, incorrectly that "In recent months, [Telecom] announced its domestic fibre product and claimed it would have fibre to 60 percent of all homes in Australia by 1996". CONTINUED