The Australian Government is pursuing one of the biggest and most ambitious infrastructure projects ever in the history of Modern Australia. The $43 Billion National Broadband Network, popularly known as NBN. After, a rather unsuccessful private bidding process (in which Telstra was excluded due to debatable reasons), Don Vito Corleone (Oops! read that as Stephen Conroy), the Communications minister decided that the Government will execute the project itself. Of course, with participation from the industry.
It is well known fact that Telstra is the only Telco which has the wherewithal and the financial backing to complete this project. In fact I am told that Telstra has such advanced plans for the NBN, that it can start work at the hint of a word. Telstra, is asking for something in return. Now discussing that is not in my scope, and I myself have some reservations about that.
Unable to move any forward in the project, except establishing a Board and realising that it is impossible to realise the NBN dream without Telstra, the minister in teh way of legislation has asked Telstra to do a couple of things. Mind you these couple of things are in the interest of consumers. That is increasing competitiveness.
1. Sell Foxtel, and hence the cable tv network
2. Sell Fixed network infrastructure
3. Banning Telstra from any more 3G spectrum
Interesting, one would think, that all these are potential competitors to NBN. Broadband, for the less tech savvy, is a concept that is able to provide huge bandwidth and speed over long distances. There are mutliple technologies that enable the realisation of the broadband concept. The most popular ones are ISDN, Cable (Fibre Optic), ADSL (via Fixed line network), Satellite, Cellphone (like 3G via HSDPA), Wireless and many more.
Now if Telstra is excluded from the participation of the NBN, it is most likely that Telstra will ramp up its existing infrastructure including Cable (Fibre), replacing Copper and extra growth in the 3G spectrum. All this would directly put Telstra in competition with NBN and its partners. Isn't this good for the consumers. This is what is competition.
The government is exactly doing the opposite by clipping Telstra's wings and building the NBN as a monopoly.
I just don't get this.
