Telstra Enters NBN Race

TELSTRA has continued 12 months of brinksmanship in its aggressive bid against regulation by not submitting a full bid for the federal Government's $10-billion plus national broadband network, instead lodging a 12 page, $5 billion proposal to build a network in major cities.

Rival Optus said a new entity called Optus Networks Investments (ONI), backed by the Terria consortium, has lodged a bid for the NBN, alongside Acacia Australia and Axia NetMedia.

Telstra said the changed financial climate, slowing economy and falling dollar all meant it could not meet the Government's goal of a network that would reach 98 per cent of Australians.

Instead, it would extend its own existing networks by spending $5 billion as well as using the Government's $4.7 billion contribution as a loan to extend the network to between 80-90 per cent of the country as long as it received the regulatory certainty it has been seeking. The telco's proposal is subject to a number of conditions for the life of the project, including no further separation of Telstra and regulatory certainty.

Terria revealed details of its proposal last week. It costed the network at about $15 billion and said this would buy 75,224 nodes, two satellites, 1360 new wireless base stations and 100,000km of fibre. The Optus/Terria proposal would provide jobs for 4174 people over five years to build the network. It would start the build in under-serviced regions and metropolitan black spots, and begin the rollout simultaneously across Australia.

Terria chairman Michael Egan said, "It's to our commercial advantage to roll out to the country areas first, and that's because every customer we get in the country is new, if we roll out to the city, there is already adequate broadband there.Telstra has a different commercial incentive and that is to roll out to the city first, and that way they can eliminate their existing competition.''

Canadian wireless company Axia NetMedia confirmed it had lodged a bid at 9am today to provide nationwide coverage. Axia chief executive Art Price said the companys proposal would deliver "a world-class, ultra-high-speed open access real broadband network" to the nation.

"Axia has incorporated the best practices form our experience in Alberta, France and Singapore in the next generation network solution that we have offered to Australia," said Mr Price, who was enroute to Singapore.

Mr Price told a Senate inquiry this week that structural separation of the network was essential for competition. "Only in the telecommunications industry does anyone advocate that competing with your customer can work," he said.

Full Article: Australian IT