From
http://www.independentweekly.com.au/...ne/809461.aspx
Telstra Corporation Ltd says it is ready to build a national high-speed
broadband service if it wins the Federal Government's tender for the
proposed network. The Federal Government has promised to provide up to $4.7
billion to help build the network, which analysts estimate could cost as
much as $12 billion.
Telstra group managing director of public policy and communications Phil
Burgess told an SA Great business audience in Adelaide recently that Telstra
was the best prepared telecommunications operator to build the network. He
said Telstra was well advanced with detailed plans to build a fibre network
that connects 98 per cent of Australians to 12 megabits-a second broadband.
Australian broadband now runs at 1.5 megabits a second.
Telstra's competitor in the tender is a consortium called Terria which is
led by the Singapore Government-owned Optus. The Federal Government recently
extended the original bid deadline from June 25 by at least 12 weeks to give
the bidders time to examine Telstra's existing infrastructure.
Dr Burgess again hit out at the competition watchdog and its chairman Graeme
Samuels, saying that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's
(ACCC) policies failed to promote investment in the telecommunications
industry.
"I'm in Adelaide to help you understand what's at stake by the Federal
Government not making a decision about getting decent broadband
infrastructure installed in this country," Burgess told the
SA Great crowd in the Minter Ellison boardroom overlooking the city.
Telstra has $5 billion lined up. They are training 4000 technicians to put
in a glass fibre cable network with 90,000 nodes - the size of two fridges -
that will deliver the world's best broadband to 98 per cent of Australians.
Just like Italy and Finland.
"It will be a bigger project than the Snowy and it will take at least five
years to put in - plus another three to make it all work and to clean up -
just like when you make a cake, you've got to do the dishes."
Burgess said the ACCC had failed to encourage investment and increase
competition in the industry.
He said Samuels' concept of competition was for all parties to get together
and come up with an arrangement that more or less suited everybody. "I hate
this hippy thing of all getting together in the hot tub and smiling at each
other and all working together with subsidised competition," Burgess said.
"Competition's not about that crap - it's about winning.
"The Howard Government offered a billion dollars to the Optus Elders crowd
and they couldn't even come up with a plan after eight months. So they had
to drop that." "In the old days - six months ago - we were still living in
the cheap energy society. That's gone forever.
"In business you can only increase profit by lifting revenue or cutting
costs and broadband is a sure-fire way of cutting costs." Burgess said
business operators could use fast broadband to take their activities to the
next level. He said Australia was well ahead of the world in wireless
broadband.
"But Australians don't celebrate businesses that are successful," Burgess
said. He explained that when Sol Trujillo took over managing Telstra three
years ago the company was losing market share in most of its businesses,
profit was going down, costs were going up and the big bureaucracy was
floundering.
With two of the five years left to play, the so-called "three amigos" have
turned things around and the government should be grateful as the recovery
enabled it to sell down the rest of its Telstra stake which put $15 billion
in the kitty known as the Future Fund, to look after Canberra fat cats'
super. Without Sol and the amigos, Burgess reckons the figure would have
been half that.
"The government has called for a tender with a deadline that's just been
extended yet again and the Senate recently voted on another inquiry that
will push a starting date out even further," Burgess said.
He said the Prime Minister had the opportunity to make a decision that would
turn around the public perception that he's running a do-nothing government.
"We got the money, we're paying for it but all we get is bleating about how
much we're going to charge for it," Burgess said. He outlines the story of
Sydney's underground roads company that charged motorists an arm and a leg
to use a tunnel so it was boycotted.
Even after the government shut off 13 roads to make people use it, they
still wouldn't.
"If we charge too much, people won't use it. How simple is that?" Burgess
said.
"Then we'll have to put the price down. If they still don't use it we'll
have to put the price down again."
"The government will still be able to control things through regulation."
Telstra moves into the fast lane 
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