Australian National Broadband Network, a new approach required

The Australian Federal Government has announced an ambitious broadband upgrade plan.

The plan features fibre-to-the-home, and internet speeds of 100 Mb/s, which sounds good, until you consider it will take 8 years to implement. I only hope the specs increase as the programme progresses. But that's not what we're concerning ourselves with here.

The Federal Government called for tenders to build the proposed network. The privileged, incumbent, formerly government owned telco, Telstra submitted a non-compliant bid - part of the ongoing political argy-bargy as Telstra asserts its privately owned status with the former owner. The upshot though, was that Telstra was excluded from the rest of the process.

Apparently none of the other tendering consortia came up with a sufficiently visionary proposal either, so the Federal Government has decided to implement their vision in partnership with private industry. This could potentially break Telstra's network monopoly and in some quarters, is seen as the first truly competitive network move since the government owned telco was privatised and a major private competitor was invited to attempt to compete. As an aside, that private competitor, Optus is now owned by the Singapore government and don't we look like a right bunch of chumps.

As for Telstra, the government appears to have opened the door for Telstra to return to the process, as the major "private" investor. The government has signalled that they will legislate to split off Telstra's wholesale business anyway, separating the incumbent network (monopoly) from Telstra's sales and marketing business. We just need to wait for Telstra to read the writing on the wall and, as the biggest telecommunications player in the country, formulate a strategy to regain as much of their former market dominance as possible. Sigh.

The bid process proved the other telcos can't collectively mount a credible alternative. You'd think every other telecommunications business would set aside their differences and see this as the last-chance to break the Telstra monopoly. Gods forbid every telco in the country join together to build a decent network from which all could prosper. More about the failure of both public and private provision of utilities, later.

My technical gripes aside, the Government's vision appears to exceed all the player's capacity, which is as it should be. The problem is that the Australian public will be investing in a network that private enterprise doesn't have the vision to attempt, but then that network will be sold/handed to private enterprise to 'maintain' into the future.

This might be a concession to current (demonstrably failed) economic philosophies so that the project can proceed, but isn't it time Australians demanded our governments stop this reckless abandonment of public utilities (power, water, communications, roads, etc)?

Hopefully, when the NBN is sold in 5 years time, no telco will be able to afford the buying price.

I think another model is required for provision of public utilities. Traditionally in Australia, governments provided and managed such services, but their recent behaviour, either selling utilities off to companies unable to maintain them adequately, but dramatically increasing prices to the consumer; or failing to maintain and grow utilities themselves (no new roads built in my home state, which is larger than Texas, for 10 years) disqualifies govenments from any future role in managing public infrastructure.

What is needed is a model for public utilities to be owned and operated by non-profit, non-government, non-private, organisations. Maybe, as the dust settles on the failure of capitalism, and the current economic shake-up, a new model will emerge…

Something where the basic service is available (to anyone) from the non-profit, and government/private corporations (I see no distinction anymore) scramble to value-add for those who want more.

Let corporations pay a proper wholesale price, which includes adequate maintenance and development of the infrastructure, instead of the current (no infrastructure maintenance/growth for 10 years) model which was both false-economy and crippled Australian economic competitiveness.