Faltering start for Australian broadband ambitions
By The Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) in Industry
Posted in Next generation broadband on
Australia’s new Labor government has been quick to follow-up on its key election pledge to make Australia a global leader in broadband. Within days of being elected, the new government announced the creation of a new Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. It has also pushed ahead with its plan to deploy a super fast new fibre to the node (FTTN) network throughout the country.
Labor’s broadband proposals became a high profile issue during the election. So much so that the incumbent government rushed to produce an alternative plan of its own, and the two parties soon found themselves competing to see who would pledge the most public funding to support the roll out of these new broadband networks.
However, the new government’s plans have just hit their first hitch. The government-backed proposal that involves a consortium of companies called the G9 group was rejected by the Australian competition regulator. The competition authority raised concerns about the lack of a clear pricing structure after the first three years of what is a 15-year deal. The G9 group insist there is as much clarity as possible in their proposal, given the difficulty of predicting demand for next generation access (NGA) services that far out.
So it’s back to the drawing board for now. But the current situation in Australia highlights some of the complexities involved in the transition to the next generation of broadband, particularly around predicting demand for services, take-up amongst business and consumers, and appropriate pricing structures.
It will be interesting to see how the new government and the G9 group approach this first hurdle, whether they will be able to overcome the concerns of the competition regulator, and if so, how.
Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG
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