Broadband plan flaws exposed by Telstra

Senator Nick Minchin, the opposition communication spokesman has said that many fatal flaws have been exposed by Telstra in the federal governments problem stricken national broadband network plan.

Unless any ideas of the separation of Telstra, the largest telco in Australia were removed from the discussions it said would refuse to take any further part in the project for the national broadband network.

In an effort to offer customer better prices and encourage competition the rivals fighting Telstra said that the winners of the bid for the project should have to separate its retail and network businesses.

It was, however, advised by Telstra recently in a Senate hearing that any further separation to its operations would render it unable to maintain or even build a world class NBN.

Senator Minchin said “Telstra’s evidence was a damning indictment of Labor’s fatally-flawed NBN tender process and highlighted just how unrealistic many of its key objectives are.”

He then went on to say that Telstra had reaffirmed that the building of the network within the five years as proposed by Labor would be virtually impossible.

Senator Minchin advised “If Telstra does not lodge a bid by the 26 November closing date, the NBN tender process will be a complete farce,”

The process for the tendering the this multi-billion dollar project was supposed to have gone through by June of this year, and the end of 2008 was to have seen the construction of the network starting if the plans by the government had hit target. But the end of 2009 appears to be a more realistic date now for the fiber-to-the-node network construction.

An expert panel has been appointed by the government to consider the proposals over a six week period and the bid deadline for any tenders has now been moved back to 26th of November. And before an announcement is made by the government as to which bidder it prefers a further two weeks will be given for the panel to take advised from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on the proposals.

Although a contribution of $4.7 billion will be put towards the estimated $15 billion construction costs by the government Senator Minchin has already said that it has been exposed how totally unrealistic the federal governments expected return on its investment is.