NBN: recent developments and what it means for Aussie Businesses
The demand for faster broadband and the lack of private sector investment in appropriate Infrastructure has incited national public debate about how much of a "clever country" Australia really is. Report on the Australian Broadband "> reports from the OECD shows communication services in Australia are among the most expensive and least value for money among the developed countries.
The effort to keep the pace of broadband innovation has been blamed for a number of factors. As the government gradually shed its controlling stake in Telstra, its retail, wholesale and monolithic network infrastructure was not broken up and sold separately. While this maximized the value of the company for sale, this company was given ownership of the national copper network. This resulted in frequent run-ins with the ACCC over anticompetitive practices. Another problem for broadband in Australia is the low population density. Deploying broadband infrastructure is expensive, and the return on investment considered low, as in rural areas, only government subsidies to ensure that services are put in place.
The government has promised to fix our broadband woes in the past federal election with a policy that will create and fund a new public company to oversee construction of a nationwide broadband network (NBN).
What the NBN?
In April 2009, the Rudd Government announced the founding of a company called NBN Co. with the aim of building a nationwide broadband network. The goal is to connect 90% of all Australian homes, businesses and schools with broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second and 10% for wireless and satellite broadband speeds of up to 12 Mbits per second transfer rate. The entire project is expected to take up to 8 years, with fiber optic cables and infrastructure to be rolled out in the metropolitan area and rural areas simultaneously. With a budget of 43 billion dollars that the government initiates a very ambitious project will cost a great deal to the taxpayer, but promise to withdraw Australian broadband in line with the rest of the developed world.
Yet Telstra?
Having promised to keep NBN Co. wholesale only to the Australian broadband market, the bill shows the company will be able to offer retails services if the government approves them. This can put the company in direct competition with its wholesale customers. This has raised strong concerns of possible anti-competitiveness of the company which operated throughout the ministerial discretion.
Meanwhile, the government forced Teltra separate retail and wholesale / network structure into separate units. The telco giant and the government plays a legal "cat and mouse "game as the government threatens to deny access to Telstra 4G mobile broadband spectrum, if it does not cooperate. The future of 4G mobile spectrums have been recently purchased by Senator Conroy, through an agreement with the commercial television networks, as was promised lowered broadcasting license fees and paid 250 million U.S. dollars to hand over their analog television frequencies. These recycled wireless spectrum is expected to be delivered to the NBN Co and possibly auctioned off to the big telcos.
Trials Begins the Australian mainland
The federal government announced second March that the first sites on mainland Australia, where the new National Broadband services will be rolled Out:
• The Melbourne suburb of Brunswick
• An area of Townsville covers parts of Aitkenvale and Mundingburra
• Minnamurra and Kiama Downs, on the south coast of NSW
• Armidale, NSW, including the University of New England
• Willunga, South Australia
About 3000 homes and businesses in each location will participate in the trial network and is said to provide a diversity of terrain and climate to test the service.
NBN benefits to business
The new nationwide broadband network, which will be available to help make Australian businesses more competitive and productive in the global economy. While the project represents the largest single investment in information technology in Australian history, the question remains whether the NBN will be future proof. Being about 8 years before the proposed rollout is complete; 100 megabits will be fast enough that far into the future? The government assures us that a 1 gigabit upgrade will be built into the network to ensure that the project is doomed to redundancy before the end of the project.
In the information age of the 21 century, to faster broadband services promise to accelerate business processes and make them more effective. Internet speeds of 100 + megabits will enable more web-based media content as video and other data-intensive applications over the Internet.
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