Serious doubts over the NBN bill raised by Utility groups

As the NBN rollout draws closer and plans for amendments to the telecommunications legislation are discussed a number of business and utility group have voiced their “serious misgivings” about the whole process.

With a number of large businesses awaiting economic justification for the government spending $43 billion on the NBN there have also been a large number of submissions that have voiced concern regarding the anti-competitive and national security implications of the bill as an impending public hearing on the ‘Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures No 1) Bill’ is launched by a Senate inquiry.

With a view to possibly using existing infrastructure as part of the forthcoming NBN rollout, the amendment will enable the government to force utilities providers to hand out confidential information about their networks.

Serious concerns have been raised by groups like the Water Service Association of Australia over the changes, saying “the Australian urban water industry has serious misgivings regarding use of the urban water industry’s infrastructure for the deployment of the national broadband network as contemplated in the Bill in question.”

While the revealing of data showing the location data of the water infrastructure had serious implications on national security, it was an entirely different matter to consider using such an infrastructure to aid the rollout of the NBN, said the WSAA.

The service quality implications and increased ongoing cost of maintenance would more than likely counter any benefits gained from the lower deployment costs resulting from using an existing infrastructure for the NBN the group added.

Charges for accessing the infrastructure would also need to be looked into said the Water Services Association, as charges are already levied against telecoms providers who access certain types of infrastructure by operators like Hunter Water. The group advised “WSAA would expect that such charging arrangements would continue to apply to the providers of the national broadband network.”

Source – CommsDay