Wireless broadband threats from Telstra dismissed by Conroy

The idea of Telstra competing with NBN in terms of level speed using a wireless broadband network have been met with the comment ‘the laws of physics say that’s not right’ by Stephen Conroy, the Broadband Minister as he dismissed any concerns over the threat.

Claims made by Sol Trujillo, the chief executive of Telstra that if the government introduced legislation that stopped it from creating a rival fibre network that would be built over the NBN it would look to wireless broadband. The claims came after the recent announcement that the telco had been excluded from the RFP process.

The current Telstra’s Next G network is claimed to offer download speeds of up to 14Mbps, and a speed increase of up to 21Mbps will be possible after eHSPA/HSPA+ technology was recently tested on the telco’s network.

Australians were, however, urged by Conroy that when trying to make a comparison between wireless and the 12Mbps speeds expected from the NBN, to ‘temper’ Telstra’s advertised wireless speeds against ‘the two laws of physics, which are immutable’.

Conroy said “The great difference between a fibre optic network and a wireless network is that a wireless network is a shared network. The more people using the same wireless tower, the slower the speeds. You can claim to deliver 14… 21 or LTE in a few years can deliver 50Mbps, but that’s providing you are standing underneath the tower at midnight, and you’re the only person using the network.”

The threat of any legal action taken by either the other consortiums if Telstra is later allowed back into the bidding or from Telstra itself after its removal from the RFP process is, however, something that is far more worrying for the government.

Before any decision was made to throw Telstra out legal advise was sourced from four separate sources internally within the department said Conroy. These sources were the Solicitor-General, Corrs Chambers Westgarth and the Australian government’s solicitor probity advisor.

Conroy said “No-one’s suggested it at this stage but potentially people have reserved their rights on legal action. They [Telstra] clearly have a different legal view to the legal view reached by the expert panel.”

He went on to add “It would be unfair to the other bidders for us to, after the bids had closed, to reopen them to admit one of the bidders who had failed to supply all the information. There would be legal and financial risks to the Commonwealth Government if we were to reopen the process, possibly from other potential bidders.”