Rudd government under fire

The releasing of two reports that were used to justify the building of the fibre-to-the premises National Broadband network costing $43 billion has been refused by the Rudd Government causing widespread concern from many quarters.

The commercial sensitivities of the reports has been the reason given by government for not allowing these report to be released and so far only a small part of over 1400 pages contained within these two reports has been shown.

The decision for the government to abandon the original plans it had for the broadband network were based on the information provided by these two reports, one of which came from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and their other from the expert panel that had been put in place to examine the original proposals from bidders.

During the latest Senate estimates the Opposition made accusations that no evidence for the building of a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network had been provided and that the Government was simply using the reports to hide behind.

The original plans to build a fibre-to-the-node network (FTTN) have now been replaced by the new FTTP plan, which has been described by Kevin Rudd, the prime minister as being the single largest undertaking with regards to infrastructure in the history of Australia.

Following the advice given by the expert panel that had been appointed by the Federal Government, which said that the expectations of the Government could not be met by any of the proposals that had been put forward, it decided to scrap its original plans that would have cost around $10 billion with taxpayer’s money adding a further $4.7 billion.

Nothing was held in the single page of ‘observations’ that had been released so far by the Government that would have suggested that an FTTP network should be built said Nick Minchin the Opposition communications spokesman.

Senator Minchin said “There is no evidence to the parliament that this panel recommended a $43 billion fibre-to-the-premises network. The Government has relied on this expert panel report as having recommended going to fibre-to-the-premises, and yet we cannot see anywhere written evidence of that and no extract from the panel report to substantiate that. The only reference to fibre-to-the-premises is that the proposals have also demonstrated that rolling out fibre-to-the-node is unlikely to provide a sufficient upgrade path to fibre-to-the premises.”

Source: www.theaustralian.news.com.au