Coalition clueless on broadband

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 05 November 2008 10:38

Opinion and Analysis

Unfortunately all Minchin had to offer was to hark back to the Coalition's "Australia Connect" initiative of mid 2007. That, in its totality, was singularly short-lived and unmemorable. So let me remind you.

It was announced when the Howard Government made its controversial award to the Optus Elders consortium of almost $1b of taxpayers money to rollout a regional WiMAX network. That was one leg of the three pronged approach, and of course was killed off by the incoming government.

A second was the Broadband Guarantee - a subsidy for those beyond the reach of 'metro-equivalent broadband services. According to Simon Cobcroft from The Department of Broadband etc, who also presented at the conference that is running fairly well.

But the main thrust of that 'policy' - a 'plan' to deliver high speed broadband to the majority of Australians - was nothing more than a reaction to a situation that was not of the government's making.

Telstra first proposed FTTN in August 2005, but canned its plans when it could not get the guarantees it wanted. The G9 consortium was formed promising a rival bid. By the time it announced 'Australia Connect', the government was looking at receiving a new unsolicited FTTN proposal from Telstra and one from G9, both of which would have required regulatory change.

The core of 'Australia Connect' was the formation of an expert panel to evaluate these offers. This was hardly a considered policy. The criticism levelled by Minchin against the Rudd Government's NBN policy - that it is bereft of any realistic or robust public policy approach - were levelled against 'Australia Connect'. There were calls for it to canvass wider options than FTTN and not to rush to a decision.

The Competitive Carriers' Coalition said: "The next step is to ensure that [the Expert Panel] has terms of reference that do not preclude them from investigating issues such as the role of alternative technologies, and the time in which to consider them...The CCC has consistently said that the decisions about who should invest in new broadband networks should not be a two horse race between Telstra and the G9, and should not simply be about a fibre to the node network architecture."

Had it not been 'rescued' from the consequence of this 'policy' by losing the federal election, a Coalition Government may well by now have been suffering the fate which Minchin foresees for the Rudd Government: of becoming monumentally exposed as the whole thing started to unravel.