Written by:uanmiFriday, April 04, 2008
On 1 April 2008 the new Australian Government cancelled the OPEL contract for regional and remote broadband access. The previous Government had signed a contract with OPEL, a consortium of Optus and Elders, for a broadband network and had committed nearly $1Billion as a government contribution to the new network implementation. Whilst there had been some criticism of the OPEL decision to utilise fixed WiMAX rather than the newer mobile WiMAX the cancellation of the OPEL contract may now limit the available options for network access to regional and remote users.The question of what is going to happen next will be important because the likelihood of Telstra winning the upcoming FTTN contract and the replacement regional and remote contract must have strengthened. If Telstra does win the upcoming contracts then there will be more friction and tension between Telstra and the ACCC, the Government regulator. Recently the ACCC has attempted to ensure that budget service providers can enter the market and compete equally against Telstra, a premium service provider (more expensive).The next year will be an important year for Australian Telecommunications and will rank equal to the years in which the satellites were sold to Optus and Telstra was sold as one entity. Many industry insiders wonder openly at the many mistakes that have been made in the Australian Telcommunication sector over the last 30 years. The current Labor Government has an opportunity to either improve competition in Australia or add to the long list of bad policy decisions that have eminated from Canberra.
On 1 April 2008 the new Australian Government cancelled the OPEL contract for regional and remote broadband access. The previous Government had signed a contract with OPEL, a consortium of Optus and Elders, for a broadband network and had committed nearly $1Billion as a government contribution to the new network implementation. Whilst there had been some criticism of the OPEL decision to utilise fixed WiMAX rather than the newer mobile WiMAX the cancellation of the OPEL contract may now limit the available options for network access to regional and remote users.
The question of what is going to happen next will be important because the likelihood of Telstra winning the upcoming FTTN contract and the replacement regional and remote contract must have strengthened. If Telstra does win the upcoming contracts then there will be more friction and tension between Telstra and the ACCC, the Government regulator. Recently the ACCC has attempted to ensure that budget service providers can enter the market and compete equally against Telstra, a premium service provider (more expensive).
The next year will be an important year for Australian Telecommunications and will rank equal to the years in which the satellites were sold to Optus and Telstra was sold as one entity. Many industry insiders wonder openly at the many mistakes that have been made in the Australian Telcommunication sector over the last 30 years. The current Labor Government has an opportunity to either improve competition in Australia or add to the long list of bad policy decisions that have eminated from Canberra.
Copyright ©2008 Mark Gregory
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