Another partner drops out of the Terria consortium

Following the recent withdrawal of AAPT and Soul from the Terria consortium the group, who are national broadband network hopefuls, have been struck a further blow by the departure of TransACT.

The Terria consortium was forced into damage control as TransACT became the third member to leave in the space of two weeks and a statement of solidarity was issued by the remaining members.

An insistence that the consortium still had a “rock-solid” support was issued in a statement by Terria, on behalf of the chief executives of the consortium members remaining, Optus, iiNet, Primus Telecom, Internode, and Macquarie Telecom.

Ivan Slavich, the chief executive of TransACT revealed, in another twist, that it had not been in Terria for quite a while. When questioned as to why TransACTs position with Terria had not been revealed Mr Slavich said “From a TransACT perspective I would have preferred not to make any comment but when there are clear inaccuracies in the paper about our organization being part of something when we’re not, that needs to be corrected.”

The comments made by Mr Slavich surprised a number of industry sources with a senior telecommunications executive saying that just over a week ago TranACT were in negotiations with Terria.

Mr Slavich refused to comment on exactly when the withdrawal of TransACT from Terria took place and stated that the federal governments request for proposal came with confidentiality conditions and could jeopardize the building of the ACT component of the network by TransACT if breached. “That would be a contravention of the process and I’m not going to jeopardize our $5 million bank guarantee by elaborating on that stuff,” he said.

Apparently the writing has always been on the wall for Terria according to Telstra. David Quilty, the Telstra spokesman said “We have always said that consortiums of this type don’t work. The steady exodus of Terria members confirms our view, but irrespective of how many members Terria has, what is most crucial is its capability, or lack thereof, to build a world-class national broadband network. It is now four months since Terria declared it would announce its funding in a couple of weeks. The onus now more than ever lies with Singtel Optus to stump up the money for the Terria bid. Until Singtel Optus fills the Terria funding vacuum, Terria can not, and will not, be considered a serious bidder.”