NBN to cost less than $43 billion: Conroy

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 19 May 2009 13:25

Your IT - Home IT

Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has stated that the government expects the actual cost of the National Broadband Network to be "significantly lower than $43 [billion]".

Addressing the annual conference of the FTTH Council Asia Pacific in Melbourne this afternoon, Conroy said a "substantial contingency" had been built into the element.

Furthermore, the government expects "substantial private sector interest" and allows for the possibility that some players may choose to offer existing network assets as a way of buying into the project.

This makes a lot of sense. Australia really should learn from the duplicated rollout of cable networks by Telstra and Optus. Telstra has already announced its plan for a relatively inexpensive upgrade of its cable network to support 100Mbps, and Optus could presumably do something similar.

If either of those networks were rolled into the NBN, that would provide a quick and affordable way of meeting the Government's 100Mbps promise to a substantial slice of the population, allowing most of the early work to focus on broadband-poor areas.

That's not to say that cable should be locked into its current footprint. FTTH would allow greater speeds in future (especially for uploads), so I'm not suggesting that cable should be regarded as other than a stopgap measure. But it would provide a focus to settle the issues around an open-access regime sooner rather than later.

That said, it is probably more likely that participants will bring their existing backbone links to the NBN venture, clinging to their existing 'last mile' arrangements for as long as possible.

Conroy summoned the spirit of a revered Liberal figure to support the Government's plan - see page 2.