Terria consortium loses another member – TPG-Soul

Eight days after the announcement of AAPT to leave the Terria consortium the group have now been hit by the departure of TPG-soul who has decided to follow suit.

There are now only Optus, Internode, iiNet, TransACT, primus and Macquarie Telecom left in the Terria consortium, which will be looking to offer a bid for the National Broadband Network, as a result of these recent withdrawals.

The confirmation of TPG-Soul’s departure came via email on Friday 24th October said Michael Egan, the Terria chairman. Mr Egan said “It doesn’t really come as a surprise.” Communication received since the merging of TPG and Soul were non-existent said Mr Egan

He advised “Since the groups have merged we’ve had no dealings with them at all. I’ve never met anyone from Soul, they’ve never attended any meetings or entered in any correspondence with Terria.”

Terria have now lost both TPG-Souls and also AAPT, who withdrew from the consortium just over a week ago. A reluctance by the AAPT to commit to the NBN financially was the reason it gave for leaving. Similar reasons were also given in the mail from TGP-Soul.
At the time of withdrawal the telco said “Since joining Terria, we have been open about our intention not to financially support any network build.”

If the bid that could grant Terria as much as $4.7 billion of funding from taxpayers was successful Mr Egan said that the departure of TGP-Soul from the consortium would in no way impact its ability to fund the project.

He said “We never anticipated getting a cent from TPG-Soul. This will no way affect our bid at all. We absolutely guarantee that we will still be entering a bid – in fact we are the only ones that have and we are very confident that it will be a crackerjack bid. As far as nationwide bids go it could be a one-horse race.”

The expectation will now be for Optus to fund the majority of the investment if Terria is successful in its bid.

Maha Krishnapillai, an Optus spokesman said “Optus remains strongly committed to the success of this bid. We have the desire and the capability to make significant investment in this project if the regulatory framework is appropriate and we believe that competition can thrive as a result.”