Government taking its time with NBN
Remember back when Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy said that he expected the national broadband network to start rolling out at the end of 2008? Things haven’t exactly gone to plan.
Today it was announced that the government will only reveal details of the rollout after the winner of the tender is announced.
The current plan is to reveal the details of the contract the day after the tender is signed by the winner.
Of course, we don’t actually know yet who the winner will be, or when the winner will be announced. Conroy has publicly stated that he’s aiming to have the contracts signed by the end of March, but has refused to give a firm commitment on a date.
He’s also refusing to reveal the contents of two expert reports into the bids.
Of course, with Telstra out of the race now, thanks to its arrogant and non-compliant bid, the stable of contenders has been whittled down considerably.
The key contenders are now the Optus-led Terria (now with only five companies left in the original nine-member consortium), the Canadian group Axia and a Victorian-based group Acacia.
Both Optus and Acacia (the latter coming out of the woodwork in November to make a bid on the NBN, back by a host of different investors) are planning to use a mix of technologies to deliver the required speeds – fibre-to-the-node in metropolitan areas; wireless and satellite in regional areas; possibly fibre-to-the-home in some newly built areas.
Axia, meanwhile, has been making some pretty big statements about what it can deliver: fibre-to-the-home for $15 a month.
It says that if it can deliver that in Singapore, where it is working on such a network, then it can deliver that in major metropolitan areas in Australia, too. It sounds a little too good to be true (and so I suspect it probably is).
There are also several state-based bidders, and there has been some speculation that the government will try and piece together a kind of hybrid bid, taking the bits that work from different bidders, rather than awarding the entire contract to one organisation.
While I don’t have any special insight into the final shape of the NBN, I am actually glad that the government is taking its time to try and get the network right.
Cooler heads seem to have prevailed in the minister’s office, and much of the craziness of last year seems to have evaporated.
It would be nice if the government was a little more forthcoming about the tender process (and the opposition has even introduced a bill to force them to disclose information), but I’m a little more confident now about the outcome of the bid than I was just 3 months ago.
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Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
Comments: 1
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gnome
Feb 6, 2009 3:46 PM
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It's better for Stephen Conroy to take the time to get it right. With the arrogant and hubristic Telstra board and management out of the way, it should be possible to patch together a very workable national coverage to deliver services at affordable prices. |