From
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.as...ontentID=83621
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 as much as $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 a business audience in Sydney that Telstra was the best
prepared telecommunications operator to build the network.
He said to build a fibre network that connects 98 per cent of Australians to
12 megabits-a-second broadband would require deploying 80,000
fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) boxes across the country.
Broadband speeds at present usually run to no more than 1.5 megabits a
second in Australia."
FTTN boxes are about the size of two moderate-sized refrigerators," Dr
Burgess said.
"80,000 of those have to be manufactured either in the US or the EU -
that's where you make them.
"They have to be transported to Australia ... they have to be put on trains
and hauled out to 80,000 sites around this country."
Who has the ability to do this? How many of these companies who are bidding
for this have already reserved assembly lines to produce the 80,000 boxes?
We have."
Telstra's competitor in the tender is a consortium led by Singapore
Telecommunications Ltd-owned Optus called Terria.
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."
In Australia for the last three and half years of Graeme Samuels' reign at
the ACCC, we've had negative investment growth in telecommunications if you
take Telstra out of the mix," he said.
Dr Burgess said the ACCC had failed to encourage investment and increase
competition in the industry.
"A regulator has three purposes in a market economy - to protect the public
health and safety and to advance consumer choice, to promote investment in
an industry and to have a healthy and competitive industry."
"The ACCC fails on all three counts."
Asked how the ACCC was preventing investment in the industry, Dr Burgess
said the ACCC's pricing policies have encourage other competitors not to
build and instead to "ride off" Telstra's network.
"They've depressed investment by Optus and other providers and that's not a
good thing for the country."
An ACCC spokesperson declined to comment on Dr Burgess' remarks.
Telstra ready to build broadband network 
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