Stuart Corner
Thursday, 13 March 2008 11:48
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 4
The visiting head of Canadian telco, Axia Netmedia has told the Atug conference thata ubiquitous open access long haul network network around Australia could be built for $2 billion and with it competition would be able to deliver affordable high speed access to much of Australia.
In early 2007 the ALP's promise to deliver broadband at 12Mbps to 98 percent of the population was just a policy statement and the then Coalition Government had $600 million of Broadband Connect funding up for grabs for anyone willing to deliver broadband services to underserved parts of regional and rural Australia.
Somewhere along the line that $600m became $1 billion and went to the Optus/Elders consortium, we had an election, the ALP came to power and is now going all out to deliver on its policy promise.
But back in early 2007 one of the bidding consortia going after the $600m was coming from a different position: instead of promising to deliver services to end users it was offering to provide a very substantial upgrade to Australia's long haul fibre network, arguing that backhaul cost, not access, was the hurdle at which competitive providers of broadband services in regional and rural Australia stumbled. Putting sufficient capacity at attractive prices into regional centres was all that was needed to allow competitive access providers to spring up and start offering affordable services.
The consortium comprised Nextgen Networks, IPStar, Broadcast Australia and Agile Communications (Internode). It promised to install 10,200kms of new fibre infrastructure comprised of a new north-south cable linking Nextgen's east-west cable to Alice Springs and Darwin; a new cable across the north of Western Australia and down the west coast to Darwin; a new link across Bass Strait to provide, along with the fibre laid with the Basslink power cable, Telstra-independent protected capacity to Tasmania; extensive new fibre in Tasmania; several new fibre links around Victoria and South Australia.
Even with that impressive offering it was not optimistic. An executive with one of the partners suggested that if the consortium were awarded the contact the minister would not be able to get up and say anything specific about which rural communities (and the voters therein) would be getting broadband at what speeds, when and at what price.
CONTINUED
