Conroy readies new laws to curb NBN competitors

By Ry Crozier on Oct 18, 2010 6:00 AM
Filed under Telco/ISP

Brings potential "cherry-pickers" into line.

The Federal Government will shortly introduce draft laws that compel any telco that builds a new fibre network (or upgrades an existing one) to meet the technical and open access standards of the proposed national broadband network.

The proposed new laws represent acceptance on a significant recommendation from the $25 million NBN implementation study prepared by McKinsey & Co and KPMG.

If passed, the laws would make NBN Co the sole fibre network operator nationally, enshrining in law that no company may build or operate a network that competes directly with NBN Co for customers.

The NBN implementation study raised concerns that "carriers other than NBN Co might construct fixed-line superfast access networks (such as Fibre to the Node, DOCSIS 3.0 or competing FTTP networks) only in high-income and low-cost, high-density areas and then undercut NBN Co's average price due to the lack of any need to subsidise operations in higher-cost areas."

The study recommended that the Government force offenders to provide "open and equivalent access" on their networks or face financial penalties.

A spokesman for the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told iTnews that the Government "will shortly introduce legislation regarding any new or upgraded fibre networks.

"The legislation will ensure any new or upgraded networks will have to meet NBN standards and offer a wholesale service on an open and non-discriminatory basis," the spokesman said.

"These arrangements will ensure all future networks will support effective retail level competition and deliver NBN-consistent outcomes for everyone."

The news came as iTnews raised concerns that the construction of a private fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network in Brisbane announced last week could create future difficulties for NBN Co.

The Government appears to be taking the stance that the Brisbane Council project will dovetail into the NBN, and that NBN Co will not be forced to duplicate the network with its own fibre in the future.

"As long as the Government’s requirements are met there should be no need for overbuild," a spokesman for Conroy said.

Conroy readies new laws to curb NBN competitors

31 comments in this discussion

"@BB2 said "I was primarily talking about the 5% of premises between 88% and 93% that cost between 35 to 100 times the cost per premises to install fibre to compared to the city, 20%+ of the build ..."

By umbria

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Comments: 31

MisterQ Oct 18, 2010 8:50 AM	Open Access Standards? Is that anything like the Open Access Business Plan? Or the Open Access details of the Network Filter and Monitoring that the government is undertaking?
Rossyduck Oct 18, 2010 8:57 AM	This law will potentially further mess up the market, rather than fix it. It will be even worse if the existing succesful players now have to follow archaic, "innovation stifling" NBN Co guidlines rather than international standards. Just one example - 66% sparing just means more fibre to fix when the very thick cables to the centralised architecture favoured by these clowns gets cut. Frankly if a competent organisation can build and operate a network or sees a market, let them rather build it. It saves my children's children tax $$$.
BB2 Oct 18, 2010 9:24 AM	I am surprised the die hard supporters of the current NBN proposal can't see what the real deal is. If you live in a city or large regional city, YOU WILL BE GROSSLY OVER-SUBSIDISING BROADBAND FOR REGIONS AND REMOTES to such a degree that you are probably going to pay up to 4 times the commercial rate that you could have had with open slather competition in your areas. This legislation will remove your options for a faster cheaper link and also give government control (AKA pricing and entry control) to thwart new entrants. A lot of people would keep their DSL or cable service if it was 1/3 of the price per month, something that is obtainable with strong competition. So one monopoly is replaced by a much worse one, that will still be in private hands in the end. I am not opposed to the NBN, just its current form. I think a three tier pricing model should make it fairer eg City User x 1, Regional User x 1.5, Remote User x 2. If the government won't subsidise higher city rents over country areas, why should it subsidise communications systems to such a large degree. The last 5% (to get between 88% and 93% coverage) costs 20+% of the install cost. In some towns it will be $80K plus per house, and those towns have whole houses that cost less than that!!!
baalrak Oct 18, 2010 9:36 AM	I think it is a good idea to keep the big companies at bay and not let them run riot like they have been allowed to for decades. Also Rossyduck your "children's children might get saved some tax $$$" but they will pay more for a service that will become more and more of necessity as time goes by and will in the end provide more jobs and wealth to the nation as a whole. Wouldn't it be better for your "children's children" to be able to have the best possible future in terms of infrastructure and opportunity? Rather then sit on our hands and expect them to fix the problems later? Personally I want my children and their children to have the best opportunities possible even if that means i have to fork out a bit more tax, but that's just me.
baalrak Oct 18, 2010 9:49 AM	BB2 you seem to believe that with heavy competition that the price per month would drop, this would only be the case if the NBN was implemented which is why this legislation is being introduced. Why would the government want to fork out all this money for the NBN just to have companies like Telstra just turn around and build their own network in the city and make the NBN unfeasible? That would be plain and simply idiotic. You have to remember for the 1st time rural Australia is going to have a fair go at infrastructure which they miss out on all the time, you talk about the housing costs but you have to take into account most rural people get paid at a lesser rate per hour then people in the city and also have higher costs of living ie food, power, water, sewerage, fuel etc etc.
baalrak Oct 18, 2010 9:50 AM	sorry "people in the city" was supposed to be "people in the country" at the end about living costs.
baalrak Oct 18, 2010 10:10 AM	don't worry about last post I was right the 1st time
MerariSchroeder Oct 18, 2010 10:30 AM	If NBNCo were so sure that FTTH was the answer, why do they have to legislate market barriers? The Government keeps pointing to our international ranking in bandwidth speeds, but fails to point at the other graph which also shows poor affordability, linking the two. Increasing speed AND price will not solve the problem, and they must realise this. They're going to wring customers dry with high subscription fees and completely stop them from getting any fair market price. The monster is growing.
BB2 Oct 18, 2010 10:35 AM	baalrak, your comment makes my point exactly. Don't dress it up as a 'technology sell' when it is a 'social policy' dressed up as technology. My lifestyle choice is city. Others is country. There are different costs, incomes, benefits etc involved in both. I believe in the concept of USER PAYS, you believe in the concept of 'SOCIALISM'. The costs you mention do add up but obviously, housing is most people's highest cost. City rent $400-$700 per week, Country $150-250 per week, the difference buys an awful lot of 'other expenses' and true primary production farm income is tax free remember. I COULD GET MUCH CHEAPER BROADBAND, probably on fibre, well before 8 years and cheaper per premises and per month under existing competition models which legislation seeks to block ie BLOCKING COMPETITION. My country cousins can not get proper broadband at all, so that is where the broadband should be fixed. Fix the regions and the bush (and the city blackspots) and then you are done and probably saved the country $20BN that you could more appropriately IMHO use toward health, housing, amelioration of poverty, ageing population pressures etc. Why put an $80K fibre link to a house that is worth $80K. Instead buy the house and move the people, or go user pays with a Tiered model for NBN (that still provides some subsidy), or offer them another solution more respecting of the taxpayers dollar. If you asked the person in the $80K house 8 hours drive out of Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane what THEY wanted between 1. a fibre connection to their house and 2. $80K subsidy for something more pressing in their lives, such as a tractor, better power, better mobile coverage, better town roads, a solar power system etc I think you would be surprised at the number of people wanting the latter, not the former.
BB2 Oct 18, 2010 10:46 AM	baalrak, sorry but took a while to also just confirm. 1. Retail power for most regional areas is less per kwh than city retail. 2. Food Costs for many products such as meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables, bread is cheaper in regional shops than in the city. 3. Water and sewerage service is based on council rates which is based on the 'Unimproved Cost' of your land, with the city land being considerably more per SQM. 4. I'll give you fuel being more which is more expensive outside the cities, but I thought many have primary production diesel rebates (?? forget if this got removed) but once again, housing is THE biggest cost to families.
advocate Oct 18, 2010 11:33 AM	*If passed, the laws would make NBN Co the sole fibre network operator nationally, enshrining in law that no company may build or operate a network that competes directly with NBN Co for customers.* ... and everyone thought the Telstra monopoly was bad, I wonder what the ACCC's view on this is, after all the ACCC is all about promoting 'competition' in the market! One big deafening silence is my guess. Edited by advocate: 18/10/2010 11:34:51 AM
realitybites Oct 18, 2010 11:41 AM	@BB2 - I think you should come live up here in NQ for 12 months and see what you think. Ohh you'd better bring 400 - 500K for a house or if ya want to do it cheap 300K for a 2 bdrm unit.
BB2 Oct 18, 2010 12:25 PM	@realitybites you are by your own definition NQ, not FNQ. I was primarily talking about the 5% of premises between 88% and 93% that cost between 35 to 100 times the cost per premises to install fibre to compared to the city, 20%+ of the build budget. IMHO, remotes paying DOUBLE ie 2 x the city delivered price is not un-reasonable in comparison to me SUBSIDISING them 3-6 times what the service may have otherwise cost me with open slather competition. I currently have 15 providers fighting for my dollar. Our task is to make sure people living where you do have at least several more choices. Mandating against competition will definitely be a worse situation for anyone living in a city of 20,000 plus. Don't know if you fall into that group? Also, look at Sydney real estate and you will see that your $400-$500k won't get you more than a unit 20+ KM out of the city. Average price is $600K with it being $1M plus for all houses within about 12Km-15Km of the city centre. So home loans / rent are twice at least NQ. So once again, why the un-reasonably HUGE subsidy of your chosen lifestyle / location at the expense of mine?
nardoth Oct 18, 2010 1:29 PM	@BB2 - Quote "So once again, why the un-reasonably HUGE subsidy of your chosen lifestyle / location at the expense of mine?" Isn't it obvious? For the same reason that the Big Mines in rural WA earn the profits and pay those taxes that pulled this country out of recession. Now you can give back to them, and keep them going. Farming and Mining are not 'chosen lifestyles' like you call them, they are essential industries that not only keep the country running, but the world running. What if every farmer in the world wanted your 'city lifestyle'? you wouldn't enjoy your 'lifestyle' then considering you still need food to eat. So how much is food on your table, and the australian lifestyle worth to you? That is the big question, if people in the cities answered that truthfully they would be giving alot more to the rural australia i'd imagine.
BB2 Oct 18, 2010 2:04 PM	@nardoth @realitybites You can see from my posts that I have talked SPECIFICS, well bounded by percentages and talking about reasonable measures to achieve a BROADBAND solution that would appease both sides of political persuasion. I didn't say ANYWHERE that some subsidisation wasn't warranted. All you seem to be able to put up against this debating position are WIDE GENERALITIES about farming and mining and how much it contributes whilst insinuating that all city people are bludging off your shirt-tails. At least try to make some attempt to come to an equitable solution and AT LEAST TALK ABOUT BROADBAND to some degree.
realitybites Oct 18, 2010 2:16 PM	@BB2 "I was primarily talking about the 5% of premises between 88% and 93% that cost between 35 to 100 times the cost per premises to install fibre to compared to the city, 20%+ of the build budget." I tend to agree with you on that. My post was in response to your second post where you made the 4 points about regional Aust. "1. Retail power for most regional areas is less per kwh than city retail." Are you 100% sure about that? With energy being a mostly private enterprise these days, would not the rules of supply and demand control this? ergo, wouldn't the high population areas get a better deal based on volume consumed? I don't know what southern city dwellers pay per Kw, but to just assume that because it's regional, it's cheaper, is fraught with peril. "2. Food Costs for many products such as meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables, bread is cheaper in regional shops than in the city." This is a myth, most food distribution is handled by the duopoly, it's centralized then distributed outward. For example: My region has sugar, the refined product does not go straight from the refinery to the shelves, it's transported to the harbour, then shipped south for packaging and distribution. "3. Water and sewerage service is based on council rates which is based on the 'Unimproved Cost' of your land, with the city land being considerably more per SQM." Yes, I agree but note that regional blocks are quite larger so any reduction in price per SQM is negated, to some extent, by more SQM's. "4. I'll give you fuel being more which is more expensive outside the cities, but I thought many have primary production diesel rebates (?? forget if this got removed)" I'm pretty sure it has been removed. When I catch up with the chairman of Canegrowers at the pub next time I'll ask him :)
realitybites Oct 18, 2010 2:23 PM	@BB2 "At least try to make some attempt to come to an equitable solution and AT LEAST TALK ABOUT BROADBAND to some degree." Hey mate, you got me riled up with your second post, not your post about broadband. So you started it. ;)
nardoth Oct 18, 2010 2:43 PM	@BB2 -Talk about broadband huh. OK. "Mandating against competition will definitely be a worse situation for anyone living in a city of 20,000 plus. Don't know if you fall into that group?" I live in a city of +20,000. It is a Telstra Monopoly here (ie only Telstra DSLAM's), At the same time the Telstra support here is next to nothing. Of the main exchange in town, most of the ports are taken, with may parts of town only able to get a port when someone else disconnects. Telstra isn't doing anything about this, and try push everyone on to Wireless Broadband, which is only good close to the center of town. So i've talked to both internode and iinet, being the big 2 broadband competition. However there is no way they will be building an exchange here in the foreseeable future (this is pre NBN that they said this). So it is nice to see that you have 15 providers to choose from, all we would like is the same chance that you have.
BB2 Oct 18, 2010 4:22 PM	@realitybites sorry to get you riled, that wasn't my intention. Just trying to debate reasonably to flesh out the middle ground so to speak. I actually have family in the bush and also have traveled extensively around regional and remote areas installing communications equipment of similar type to the NBN, so if anyone was in a good position to 'talk his book' and make money from this venture, I would be one. Yet many of the regional areas IMHO drastically require decent mobile coverage, and this also provides a platform for broadband so can be a good value choice in low density areas. Many 'urban' regional people, like @nardoth (assumed) have horrendous or non-existant DSL coverage and these should be fixed IMMEDIATELY without delay. Ironically @nardoth, it is the NBN that is holding up adding more ports as the ISPs are in a holding pattern and don't want to buy new DSLAM equipment just to junk it. If no more DSL ports are added AND you had to wait 8 years for a fibre, you would be ten times more cranky than you sound now. In my post I said 'Fix the regions and the bush (and the city blackspots)' and said forget the city users who are well serviced, and also suggested reducing the NBN coverage from the un-economically viable 93% to somewhere between 85% and 88% and service the rest with mobile broadband (and satellite for those in the last 3%) which will also greatly improve mobile phone coverage in the far away regions and remote regions. @nardoth it sounds like if Telstra or some of the other providers just got some regional subsidisation package from the Government, they could give you the DSL ports you drastically need and it could happen in less than 3 months as no new delivery mechanism is required. If you ignored the well serviced cities/large centres and left competition mechanisms in place (ie stop this anti-competitive legislation) and also scaled back the NBN to just servicing regional people up to 85%-88% coverage (minus the city guys) you are probably looking at a $18bn-$25bn project instead of $43bn. You might even find that both sides of politics would be able to support it!!
epimetheus Oct 18, 2010 4:35 PM	Well, forget the infighting here! I believe most people have missed the real point. Labor, once again, is showing its' true colours in stifling any opposition. Shades of Stalin, Hitler, Nkruma, Amin or Mugabe. There will be only one "leader". He is God and nobody will oppose him! Where is all this Socialist stupidity going to end? How long before the current bunch of dimwitted parasites decides that there will be only one political party....Labor? OK, laugh if you like but to my mind when idiots like Conjob start making laws like those currently being proposed it is time to start worrying! I never believed in reincarnation but since Hitler has come back as a communications minister I have changed my mind!
nardoth Oct 18, 2010 5:00 PM	@BB2 Na the Telstra holding pattern started here well before the NBN was dreamed of unfortunatly. That is just the way it is. :( I understand what you are saying, and it makes sense. It is just that under the 'fix the blackspots' method, this place will get overlooked, for the simple fact that on paper you 'can' get adsl/adsl2+ connections here for most parts of the town, and wifi 'does' cover the rest. That is why i'm a big believer in this NBN as it stands. And as much as people say it is alot of money, if you split that 43billion down to its parts: $26b comes from the Government/Taxpayer. over 8 years that is a spending of $3.25b per year for the Tax payer. =$130 per person per year for the next 8 years. Doesn't look that bad when broken down. Considering the government invested $2.3b in computers for schools over the last 2 years. It does make sense to put a couple $b to make sure they can connect to the net as well. I think anyway.
Ace Oct 18, 2010 5:02 PM	There is very little evidence that competition in the infrastructure has done the public any good whatsoever. In fact, when competition is introduced, companies tend to concentrate on cherry-picking, getting the biggest bang-per-buck etc. If you have a country the size of Singapore, this might work. Ironically, you'll probably never see real competition there, such is the nature of asian politics. It may seem a tricky concept to some, but the idea of the NBN is to build a National Broadband Network. The only bit people seem to quibble about is the supposed cost (which is actually the budget, not the cost). This would seem to indicate that everyone thinks it's a good idea from a technology standpoint. The price is simply something that people have a problem getting their heads around, because they're not used to such number. In fact, Australian telecoms has always been expensive for obvious reasons. But we have reaped the benefits for many decades with low call costs and an incredibly reliable and accessible system.
anonymous Oct 18, 2010 5:44 PM	@BB2: "My lifestyle choice is city ... I COULD GET MUCH CHEAPER BROADBAND, probably on fibre, well before 8 years and cheaper per premises and per month under existing competition models which legislation seeks to block ie BLOCKING COMPETITION." How about you stop shouting about your urban elite attitudes and consider some facts? If you look beyond your local barista strip and try to see the national perspective, you might notice that one of the main benefits of NBN is that it is national, so nearly everybody will have the same high standard access. This means that they will be able to utilise the same personal, business and educational opportunities. Most of us believe that services like health, policing and education should be available to all, and I don't hear you opposing that. It now seems that the nay-sayers, having completely failed to make good any part of their case against NBN, are falling back to a miserable campaign of attempted divide-and-conquer among their fellow Australians. What's next - NBN will give you cancer?
Maxxi2 Oct 18, 2010 5:45 PM	Competition in core national infrastructure has seldom brought benefits, and as Ace noted, leads to cherry-picking exercises where the providers are not supporting the national requirements. (AKA: USO) National infrastructure systems require standardisation, access equity, access pricing equity and national support standards. No metro fibre provider, seeking to grab some high profit market share in Syd or Melb, is going to support the same standards or access in Gundawindi, Darwin or Yea... (Dastardly USO again...) The competiton needs to be and belongs on the retail side of the equation, where costs differentiators are justified and accepted. The huge problem with the Telstra monopoly was not the ownership of the wholesale infrastructure networks, it was the vertical integration of wholesale and retail operations and the ability to crush retail and downstream wholesale opposition and competition through leveraging off their ownership of the infrastructure. Telstra agreed to the Universal Service Obligations clauses when they were privatised, were allowed to purchase the national copper networks for a song under that agreement and then proceeded to hire more and more lawyers as the years went by as they strove to keep the profitable copper and screw the unprofitable USO.. That was a contract with the Australian people and Telstra broke it, simple. Individual fibre companies will seek to get in quickly with agreements and contracts for profitable areas and screw the rest of the country: Not a wise strategy for national infrastructure. (Must have USO for national infrastructure folks...) Australia still suffers under the idiocy of differing rail gauge standards from state to state... The standardisation for a license to install components of infrastructure MUST include a costs component to cover the national roll-out and support (ie: the same national costs metrics that the NBN will use - USO support), standardised technical componentry (unplug a device from my home in Darwin and plug it into my connection in Flinders), agree to all retail access equity clauses as all NBN providers and customers have (reflect all NBN contractual obligations...)and provide 100% guaranteed interconnectivity to at least the same level as the NBN. That should be a good start and would scare off 80% of the private fibre companies who indeed seek some quick and easy bucks in the cities but will be scared witless by paying their true share of the USO obligations. Competition simply for competitions sake has proven to be an industry standards and service levels killer in most instances of national infrastructure, both here in Australia and internationally. Australia did very very well from the PMG and Telecom Australia for over a century, and it only took a decade of privatised Telstra vertical integration to royally screw that situation.
BB2 Oct 18, 2010 7:35 PM	Wow, we went all day and got in some good debate with points considered and conceded by all views before the Government paid spin doctors found this comment section. Thanks to the last two for ending a positive debate. Obviously we should all follow your logic blindly, not ask difficult question and dance lemming-like to whatever beat you decide to play and open our wallets to let you take whatever you need in the interests of the national good...............her komrade!!!
DazzaJ Oct 18, 2010 8:16 PM	How can a monopoly, run by a control freak of a government, where no one can compete be a good thing? The government are set to FORCE this network on everybody at what cost? A lot more than the 40 to 60 billion dollars, and the removal of basic choices. If this fibre network was so brilliant then why does the government have to change rules to force people to connect, and to force out any competition and to force the extra cost on many families that are struggling now? Like many, I feel the whole NBN idea is nothing to do with supplying affordable network to people, but more to do with the CONTROL of the internet and control of information allowed to the people. One network, one filter, one logging system, one control group behind closed doors, zero freedom of information! The real costs are getting higher every day!
Tailgator Oct 18, 2010 11:58 PM	Oh for gawd's sake folks - get a grip! An announcement comes out about the NBN and suddenly Comments are filled with cries and shouts of 'Communism' 'Fascism',(or both at the same time), 'stifling innovation', 'stifling competition', etc etc. It's worse than listening to Chicken Little running around yelling 'The sky is falling, the sky is falling.' (Though at least his head was still connected to his body, which I suspect is more than what could be said for some of the posters here.) Read the bloody article and use a bit of commonsense analysis !!! "The Federal Government will shortly introduce draft laws that compel any telco that builds a new fibre network (or upgrades an existing one) to meet the technical and open access standards of the proposed national broadband network." And then .... "If passed, the laws would make NBN Co the sole fibre network operator nationally, enshrining in law that no company may build or operate a network that competes directly with NBN Co for customers." See the contradiction ??? Why draft laws compelling new providers to comply with standards if there aren't going to be any new providers, because it's supposedly outlawing them ?? And why would a spokesperson state .... "The legislation will ensure any new or upgraded networks will have to meet NBN standards and offer a wholesale service on an open and non-discriminatory basis," So new networks built by NBNCo wouldn't comply with it's own standards ??? Do you see the contradiction Ry Crozier ???? But no, mention govt, infrastructure,competition, and monopoly in the one paragraph and the loonies are drawn out as if by a full moon, leaving all sense and sensibility behind. No wonder rational and informed debate has left the building, Elvis isn't dead. Edited by Tailgator: 19/10/2010 12:04:22 AM
rycrozier Oct 19, 2010 6:19 AM	"So new networks built by NBNCo wouldn't comply with it's own standards ??? Do you see the contradiction Ry Crozier ????" We asked why the Government was full of praise for a network that looked like it could contravene anti-cherry-picking recommendations set out by McKinsey/KPMG. Answer is the network - and future others like it - won't, because they won't be allowed to undercut it on price. It's about not destabilising the NBN by allowing city-based competition. It's not stopping private sector from building; just stopping them competing with NBN Co for customers on lower (wholesale) price terms. Edited by rycrozier: 19/10/2010 07:25:55 AM
Maxxi2 Oct 19, 2010 10:03 AM	It is well worth considering at what point of time a specific piece of core national infrastructure has gone beyond the point of requiring or benefitting from general open market competition, and becomes a utilities grade entity. How smart would it be if various energy companies started to run electicity cables and gas pipes next to each other up the roadways and into our houses and offices? Dopey is what it would be, and a financial as well as support and service disaster eventually for consumers, as these would all be additional and non-required costs that the consumer would need to pay for. USO folks, it is all about USO... If a core infrastructure provider is not ready to unconditionally commit to a USO then they should not be licensed to implement core national infrastructure components and segments. Really simple. Cherry-picking is always and eventually a disaster for the consumer. Always. The aim of cherry-picking is to install at low costs where the profits are high and ignore the fringe and remote areas. They can die a dry and miserable telecoms death as far as the cherry-picker is concerned, someone else (aka tax-payers) can fund them whilst the cherry-picker sucks the guts out of a high density area at low invest costs. No give, just take. Electricity costs skyrocket at the moment, and have done for a few years, service levels plummet, the infrestraucture is ageing and now we all have to pay for smart meters per annum, whether we have them or not. So much for the benefits of privatisation of core infrastructure... Meanwhile energy company profits soar... Infrastructure providers do not lower their fees to improve our lives, they lower their fees to take out the competition, and they lower their service and support standards when they do. The fees will eventually go up, and how they will rise when the competition is gone or weak, but the service levels stay abysmal. Relevant history does repeat itself. Meanwhile, some folks have misssed the fact that 1984 was around 26 years ago and although doomsayers keep predicting totalitarian govt controls in Australia, it has not materialised at all. You are 100 times more likely to have your private data fobbed and sold off by Facebook than by your govt...
mad1k5 Oct 22, 2010 1:59 AM	BB2, I think your lacking proof that this will drive up costs. The Entire reason why prices have been cheap, it's because of competition on the fixed line network and a regulator. If you look at the competition of the wireless MARKET, where you have high pricing, crappy service, and LOW quota. Please Explain to me the difference in that. On the Wireless market, the margin for profit is much higher, yet unable to move pricing as well as value for money for customers, this is what you'll face under your scheme. ACCC will call the shots, whether or not the Government will like it, it is the regulator. ISP's can't do both Compete and Rollout Network's as it is expensive for them to do so, more costly than having everyone on one network and compete that way. Maxxi2 It shows that private Industry can't do it's job properly, especially those that control infrastructure.
umbria Oct 25, 2010 3:38 PM	@BB2 said "I was primarily talking about the 5% of premises between 88% and 93% that cost between 35 to 100 times the cost per premises to install fibre to compared to the city, 20%+ of the build budget." Australia is extremely urbanised. Even tiny NBN pilot community Willunga, with 950 people, is less than 2 sq km in area, so it has a population density of 450 people/sqkm - just like South Korea. The last time I looked the NBN fibre footprint didn't cover the Nullarbor Plain, Great Sandy Desert, or even the national parks that comprise more than half of Sydney's area. It is a high-density fibre roolout, so costs in any country town that made the cut are going to be sim ilar to those in city suburbs.