Stuart Corner
Monday, 26 May 2008 12:04
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Telstra, and others, would argue that Australia's small population scattered over a huge land mass would make such a comparison meaningless. One such is Pipe Networks which has today (26 May) issued a statement aimed at scotching suggestions it might be respondent to the Governments' NBN RFP.
CEO, Bevan Slattery, said: "Our analysis of the real cost to deliver on the government's FTTN requirements has consistently been far higher than the $8.7billion figure bandied about by government and prospective bidders. Add to this regulatory uncertainty risk to the business process and we see no benefit to our shareholders in terms of reasonable long term returns on investment."
In support of his claim
Slattery pointed out that the demographics of Australia mean that costs escalate dramatically when the last few percent of the population are included: 50 percent live in just 0.1 percent of the land mass and 95 percent in six percent but to reach another three percent a network would have to cover most twice this area - 14 percent of the land mass: more than one million square kms.
Even with conservative estimates on the length of copper required from each node he claimed that, to deliver 12Mbps, to this population would require some 350,000 nodes, almost 700,000kms of fibre for backhaul and that the fibre backhaul costs along would exceed $20 billion. He also claimed that Labor's $8.7b figure was "prepared by a 23 year old university student."
In its
initial policy document, of March 2007, the ALP gave no indication of the overall costs of its promised 12Mbps to 98 percent of the population, but referred readers to
a Telstra document , initially a confidential submission to the Howard Government in August 2005, in whch Telstra proposed a network able to deliver 6Mbps to 99 percent of urban premises and 94 percent of rural with upgraded fixed, wireless and satellite services to a further 110,000 homes and business.
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