NBN is do or die for telecommunications: Optus CEO
- 02 December, 2009 08:08
- Comments 5
The National Broadband Network (NBN) is "do or die" for competition in fixed telecommunications in Australia according to Optus CEO, Paul O’Sullivan.
In a speech given to the Committee for Economic Development Australia (CEDA), O'Sullivan said the telco had invested almost $11 billion in infrastructure since 2000 but that a "significant" amount of his time is still spent on arguing for "the interests of Australian businesses and consumers in telecommunications".
"I'm not going to claim exclusivity for us on this - but quite frankly, the debate on the National Broadband Network is do or die for competition in fixed telecommunications," he said. "So it's not been hard to take a pro-consumer and pro-competition stance.
"But I'm concerned that so much of the debate continues to be stuck as politicians argue and Telstra capitalises on this to encourage further delay."
O’Sullivan then called for the NBN legislation to be passed immediately and continued on to lay out the reasons for his position.
First it would level the playing field and remove Telstra's "fundamental conflict of interest" in regards to giving competitors access to its network.
Second, O'Sullivan said it would let Telstra's board and management "move on" to focus on new business rather than defending its "60 per cent plus margins" in fixed-line services.
Providing incentives to other industry players to grow the broadband market was the third reason while ensuring the right parameters are set between the government and Telstra on the NBN rounded out his argument.
"It's time to stop what has become a four year debate on an NBN for Australia - and time [to] move everybody on," he said in his concluding remarks.
He also reaffirmed the company would upgrade its (HFC) cable network in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney to be capable of speeds of up to 100 Mbps with a $25 million investment.
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Comments
Anonymous
Finally someone who is not a complete moron. Australia should get with the rest of the world in terms of Internet instead of still running on sub-par ISPs (and their sub-par plans).
Anonymous
Pity Minchin got back in yesterday, because his NBN-adverse, pro-Telstra rhetoric will probably continue to surface and cast doubt on what has to be done. Well done Paul O'Sullivan.
B.A.
Simple solution Paul...! Use your lobbying power to convince Mr Conroy et-al to pay Telstra a fair and commercial price, to buy back government ownership of their shareholders 'now privately owned' network infrastructure...!
If their offer is 'sweet' enough to convince Telstra's shareholders to sell off 'their' network assets then your problems will be solved...! Why, you could even demonstrate your own keenness to the government for this 'desirable outcome' by stumping up some buckets of your own corporate funds to assist them with the buyback. :-)
Anonymous
Being an employee of an outsourcing organisation, I have seen first hand the anticompetitiveness of Telstra. A tender will be released (large corporate, government agency) and if Telstra have any interest in winning the business, I can forget about going to Telstra about getting pricing or design work on the carriage component of the deal. All communications from Telstra cease regarding anything to do with that particular tender.
Anonymous
Paul O'Sullivan's comments are obvious to anybody (except Telstra) who works in the Telecommunications industry. The needed NBN roll out will eventually erode the monopoly / super profit margins that Telstra has built up from the pre-privatisation era that we Telstra customers have contributed to. Telstra and the Governments of the day, greedy for dividend payments, did not use the super profits for reinvestment into the national network and this set the scene for this ‘national tax’ to become institutionalised in Telstra’s operations.
The NBN debate is essentially the same debate that was played out with the introduction of the Internet when Telstra was only interested in telephone call traffic utilisation in the local exchanges and wanted to charge for every minute a modem was connected to a computer. This 'how do we cut up the existing pie' argument created a roadblock that contributed to Australia’s tardy and low capacity introduction to the Internet. We still have this legacy today with slow speed services and high priced upload and download data plans unseen in almost all developed countries with similar distribution logistics.
Telstra will never operate in the national interest and its time the politicians did what they were elected for and now give Australian business the tools to develop innovative products and services for the world market – the Australian public deserves the competition / productivity catch-up.
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