The Coalition defends its lack of NBN alternative, claims policy delay is standard
- 28 July, 2010 12:45
- Comments 15
Liberal Party MP and former Optus executive, Paul Fletcher.
The Coalition has defended its delay in releasing an alternative to the Government’s National Broadband Network and claimed it’s entirely normal for an election campaign.
Liberal Party MP and former Optus executive, Paul Fletcher, made his comments during a Google event in Sydney.
He also continued the Coalition’s attack on the NBN’s cost.
“[The implementation study] said even if everything went swimmingly and penetration of between 70-90 per cent is achieved the internal rate of return this network will achieve is between six and eight per cent,” he said. “We are strong fans of broadband but we do not think this present NBN is well thought out and that it puts far too much taxpayer money at risk.
“What we in the Liberal Party believe is the best way to [provide the best infrastructure] is to let the private sector do it… with some targeted public investment in areas of market failure.”
Despite the Coalition coming under heavy fire from industry groups and the Government, Fletcher denied his party was on the back foot because of its refusal to announce an alternative to the NBN.
“We will have a plan in due course,” he said. “Within the Liberal Party we are a marketplace of ideas and so I’ve been putting forward ideas as have others and when the appropriate time comes you’ll see the fruits of that labour.
“We’ll release the policy at the appropriate time and that’s a standard issue during campaigns when there are a whole range of policies to be released.”
Details of the Coalition’s alternative policy have been leaked to the media and received significant negative feedback from the IT industry. But Fletcher said it was just “speculation” and would not discuss it.
While he’s been named as the key Coalition contact on tech issues by a range of industry lobby groups, Fletcher denied he was providing a high degree of advice on the party’s alternative broadband plan.
“I wouldn’t say that I’ve had a key role, I’ve just been offering ideas,” he said.
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Comments
Annoyed
Don't these idiots realise that the private sector will never build a network such as the NBN?
SINGO
yes because its not commercially viable so the consumers would choose other methods like 3/4G data and commercially rolled out fibre as is happening NOW
Rob
Considering telstra owns the majority of the ducts and copper lines, is near impossible for anyone else to compete - they would have to deal with telstra.
Barbar
Crikey... expect anything technical that comes out of an ex-Optus exec's mouth to be nothing but cheap and nasty drivel.
Michael
3G/4G is NOT an alternative for a national network...businesses simply will not bet their corporate communication requirements on an over-the-air solution, highly latent, congested medium. Anyone who thinks otherwise knows nothing about network architecture and business requirements.
Jason
Liberals have no idea how much the NBN will help all Australians and Business's.
Then again most of the liberals are Telstra shareholders so of course they want to keep a Telstra monopoly.
peterh_oz
Liberals have lost my vote SOLELY due to the NBN.
Greens 1, Labour 2 = NBN with no filter.
Remember, The Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate. They support the NBN, and oppose the filter. Perfect!
Duke
Paul who? Oh, an ex Optus hack, that works. What about the bumbling excuse for a shadow minister that tied himself in knots on the ABC last night.
Pathetic. We have a national shame as a minister and fools for opposition.
Chris Schneider
Fibre is only a core requirement for business at the moment and this is the only sector a viable policy will cover. Consumers should wait a few years before they are rolled out with fibre but there are examples of fibre roll outs in a consumer area TransACT are currently doing it so why not let commercial ventures do the work why do the public need to pay for the system twice. The money doesn't come from the sky we will pay the price for this white elephant! Cost is currently the main driver NOT speed. This is only an issue at the corporate level
Dan
you do realise its gonna take 8-10 years to build?
lantana
@Duke, +1.
We are a very unlucky country to have two of the dumbest and most ignorant people as comms minister and shadow minister. What have we done to deserve this, for chrissake?
@peterh_oz, I wish you were right about the Greens, but they seem to have a track record of trading off non-enviro issues like censorship in exchange for some green miasma, and with their new best friends policy with Senator Conroy's Labor party, who knows where a vote for the Greens will end up.
@Chris: "speed. . .is only an issue at the corporate level." That's a very courageous statement indeed, given that the expected life of the NBN will be several decades. What bandwidth do you think we shall need out to 2050?
van
The election is less than a month away.. by the looks of things liberal aren't going to get in power, and this clown Mr Paul Felcher is telling us they'll release the a plan in due course? is that code talk for we have no plan?
nonny-moose
IF Fletcher is so surrounded by a "marketplace of ideas" whats been the holdup developing policy? it should be fairly leaking out everywhere.
the silence on the part of the Coalition re: their policy is deafening. i have to agree with van, 'in due course' is the plan you have when you dont have a plan.... kick the can down the road and promise the voters "dont worry, we'll get to it...."
Sorry. not good enough. Not that the libs had anything to offer me in the first place, but they sure are good at keeping it that way....!
and yes the whole POINT of infrastructure is you build it to last for a damn long time so you dont have to keep coming back and rebuilding it to keep up - precisely the problem with the original FTTN idea, asides from the fact Telstra was leery of spending those kinds of $ figures anyway.
BTW wireless is NOT a panacea - you would need to build in the order of 80 thousand towers/basestations, along with a large order of spectrum on the side - easily the same kind of expenditure as the NBN in the first place.
add to that the spectrum requirements for 4G per handset to do its thing is significantly bigger than 3g, going from 1.25 to 5 MHz now to anything up to 40MHz, if you really want speed. if you want that 100Mbit LTE its going to come with a cost of fewer handsets served per tower, or in other words more towers to serve the same population, and hence expenditure to do the same thing as NBN delivers.
so going back to an OPEL style policy and tinkering around the edges *really* isnt a solution, and outright regressive. No Thanks.
c
The slight of hand being played here is that private enterprise doesn't have access to the same types of revenue that the government does. As even the World Bank has said, pulling out of the NBN would be a disaster to the Australian economy.
The NBN is going to increase the GDP for Australia (according to every non-political economist), and that taxable increase is not something that a company like Telstra can make money from.
In other words, when the NBN helps Joe Six-pack build his business internationally, then his increase of income is going to be a revenue stream for the Government as well (from taxes). However, a company like Telstra wouldn't make a dime on his new-found profits...
Additionally, the removal of a monopoly as a supplier will increase competition and reduce the cost to every single Australian resident and business.
Francis
OPEL and NBN Mark I were abandoned largely because no FTTN or wireless architecture that anyone could come up with proved capable of getting regional Australia off STD copper phone bills with VoIP. IP telephony requires a steady trickle of 64 Mbps up and down, but wireless consists of higher speed bursts, satellite fails because of he physical lag time into space, and ASL fails because it dies after 5km and our country is a bit bigger than Singapore.
The coalition policy should promise a fibre rollout to have-not Australia first, starting slowly because Labor has drained the coffers. 2% of Australians will only ever get satellite, 5% will only have wireless, but 93% can be supplied fibre more cheaply than any alternative capable of 12 Mbps or better.
If the Libs campaign as the no-fibre party, they will be stone dead in regional Australia and marginal city fringe electorates.
If the Greens' social policies weren't so anti-family they would have my vote. If the Libs don't promise fibre we will have Labor government with a large Green minority.
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