subject: Labor would build open FTTN network posted: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:26:20 -0000
[This is significant. Not only is it to my knowledge a world first,
that a national government is effectively making "faster modems" an
election promise, but it it's also a world first - at least in the
developed world - that a government is proposing to build an open
network that would be shared between carriers. Until now the
approach has been to let the carriers build their own networks. This
produces, at a minimum, multiple sets of cables in the ground, and
more likely, a single extremely expensive cable that nobody else can
use (this is the current situation in Australia and elsewhere). The
proposed approach would have the network owned by the nation, and
have it rented to the carriers by the nation. This will remove the
(current) ability of the incumbent carrier (Telstra) to monopolise
the network and cripple its competitors with interconnect and transit
fees. The removal of this ability from the incumbent is a stated aim
of the plan and this makes it ground-breaking, and extremely
promising. The online article has 233 comments so far. - Stu]
Phil Sweeney | Yesterday, 6:30 pm | General
UPDATED | Labor leader Kevin Rudd has announced that Labor would
build an open access FTTN broadband network if elected, and would
contribute $4.7bn to the private sector partnered project.
"Today Federal Labor has taken an historic decision to build a world
class national broadband network", said Rudd. "We believe this is a
critical step when it comes to Australia's long term economic
future."
The funding would be made up of $2bn from the existing communications
fund, and the rest from the Future Fund's 17% stake in Telstra.
Responding to criticism for "raiding" the fund, Rudd likened it to
switching an investment, saying it was "equity for equity" and
"telecommunications for telecommunications".
Shadow finance minister Lindsay Tanner revealed that one of the key
aims of the proposal was to avoid "a giant private monopoly
effectively dominating telecommunications in this country and in
particular, the core infrastructure", with the proposal promising
open access to all ISPs.
Labor did not provide comprehensive details about the proposal, but
claimed it would provide minimum broadband speeds of 12Mbit/s to 98%
of Australians. "In practice, we would expect that substantially
faster speeds would be delivered to a very large proportion of the
Australian population", said Tanner.
Reactions to the proposal were mixed, with the federal government
mainly criticising the funding model, while both Telstra and Optus
seemed to think that the proposal was modelled on their ideas.
