Telstra Kicked Out of $15bn Broadband Project 158
An anonymous reader writes "Australia's largest telco and ISP, Telstra, has been
kicked out of the bidding process to build a national broadband network (NBN) estimated to be worth $15 billion. The Aussie government had earlier
given assurances that the proposal would be considered, however it now won't even be evaluated by the expert panel, which will make the recommendations to the Senator for Broadband and Communications. The government may now take steps to legislate so that Telstra can't build a network that competes with the NBN — leaving the incumbent to focus on wireless HSPA+ technology instead."
Telstra tried to pull a Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
They're afraid of being broken up (because they're a monopoly) so they tried to put conditions on their bid. The government slapped 'em back into their place. Now they're crying about it.
Re:Senator Conroy's handiwork (Score:5, Interesting)
Plenty of other ISP's have refused to participate. ISP's who have like iiNet have publically bagged the entire process.
I think you are really reaching if you think the two are related.
Re:What about competition? (Score:5, Interesting)
For those outside Australia Telstra can best be summed up as a combination of some of the worst aspects of the government organisation which it was and the worst aspects of a private telecommunications monopoly that it has become. Add to that a fully imported management team of executative with spectacular failures behind them of the sort that think slavery is a good idea and experise in anything is for the peasants. One was infamous for repeatedly refering to the remaining Australian management and the Australian staff as "savages".
If it wasn't close to a monopoly it would have gone the way of Enron long ago due to being run the same way.
Re:non compliant (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent up. This is all part of Telstra's brinkmanship with the government here. They tried the same thing with ADSL2, where they wanted permission to exclude/charge higher prices to competitors (despite having a monopoly on the 'last mile', so delayed making ADSL2 available to the public. In the end, the main competitors got together and put their own ADSL2 DSLAMS in place, so Telstra were forced to start allowing users onto their ADSL2 network after all.
In this case Telstra claim no one else can do it other than them, so have refused to put a proper bid in in the hope they can get more out of the government.
Re:What about competition? (Score:4, Interesting)
I beg to differ.
Consider that the competitor may (yeah, I know, work with me) be able to provide a tender for a FTTH solution, as opposed to the rather short-sighted FTTN solutions bandied about. (Axia has been talking about [news.com.au] FTTH for their bid.)
Suddenly there's no issue with Telstra - the whole legacy copper network is leapfrogged. Competition on pricing and/or quotas rages. Australia is future-proofed and Telstra has to come up with another (distinguishable) technology to stay in the game.
I realise this is not an overnight solution, but we should all be thinking further than ten years into the future. I am very hopeful that FTTH becomes a reality with the new Australian NBN, and now that Telstra is out, it's just that little bit more likely...
Re:Senator Conroy's handiwork (Score:5, Interesting)
Or rather:
3) Telstra submitted a non-conforming tender and the Government had no choice but to reject it.
Being a Government employee myself, when it comes to tendering you have to apply the same rules to everyone. If the Government had accepted Telstra's tender, even though it did not comply with the requirements in the RFT (and this was well publicised [news.com.au], they would have left themselves open for all sorts of problems, e.g. being sued by other applicants.
Optus was right to say that Telstra's submission was a joke: a 12 page letter to the Minister in lieu of a serious tender for a $4.7bn project is brinkmanship of the worst sort and the Government was right to call their bluff.
Re:No Competition? (Score:1, Interesting)
They had just as much chance as everyone else to 'compete' in this race. Telstra decided to get cocky only submitted 15 page plan with absolutely no detail because they thought they had it in the bag. Meanwhile all the other contenders put in highly detailed plans with everything that was requested by the government for consideration in the process.
Last time I checked (at least when I was in school), if your essay doesn't address the topic and doesn't meet the word count, you get a FAIL.
Nope. Telstra was anti-censorship. (Score:0, Interesting)
Nope. According to TFA 'The reasoning allegedly given by the Commonwealth for the exclusion is that Telstra did not include a plan for how to involve small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the building of the NBN when Telstra lodged its NBN proposal on 26 November.' Apparently (a quickie Google search confirms this) it wasn't even the case that Telstra sought to exclude SMEs, but they simply hadn't included a proposal upfront, something which the government could easily have asked for, but they didn't. So officially, Telstra has been kicked out of the bidding process on a trivial technicality. So that can't be the real reason.
However, if you figure out who is responsible for the decision, it turns out to be the same guy who was responsible for the Australian censorship plans, which Telstra opposed. So I think that's the real reason. However, after the recent rally, the government can't get away with actually saying that, it would cost too many votes. So they offer as a substitute an opaque technicality that the average voter will not understand, with a faint suggestion of legal unavoidability.
Viewing it from this angle, the picture is relatively simple. The goverment simply didn't want a company that opposes their censorship plans to do the backbone of their national broadband network. As usual, it's all about control.
Next Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
As usual headline is totally wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO Trujillo needs to get it through his thick head that 15 billion in tax payers money is going to come with strings attached, like it or not.
Re:Senator Conroy's handiwork (Score:4, Interesting)
... Sol has been playing politics on this broadband plan from the start. The trick to win the bid without putting in a proper bid would let him set his own terms.
Aye.
Sol, we've given you every break. We've bent over backwards to give you a chance. What we don't want to do at this point is grab our ankles.
The esteemed Mr. Trujillo is of the "everything's negotiable when you're this big" school. I think, personally, that he has mis-read the Australian psyche.
Re:What about competition? (Score:2, Interesting)
Firstly, Telstra is a formerly state owned monopoly (or at very least oligopoly) in the Australian telecommunications industry. Introducing another player into the scene will result in competition, NOT the opposite.
Secondly, this has nothing to do with the successful disavowing future interaction with Telstra, rather only placing limits on how Telstra can compete with the successful bidder.
This post really needs to be re-modded as the logic in it's argument is obviously flawed.
Outside the square (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Outside the square (Score:3, Interesting)
So why did Telstra not want to win this? It seems the perfect out. Submit a half baked proposal and omit an obvious required detail. It looks like they tried but actually they wanted to fail. Interesting.
The loser gets to focus their workforce on profitable urban customers, while the winner sends their staff into the outback pulling cables through the desert to snare 150 homes.
They are being paid for it but it means taking people away from other tasks.
Just when I thought Sol couldn't top his antics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Senator Conroy's handiwork (Score:4, Interesting)
That was my point, combined with fact that the NBN was "in the works" under Howard it debunks the OP's "coincidence" idea.
"What evidence do you have to support your claim?"
Conroy maybe the altar boy but Fielding is the rabid preacher who has got labor by the short and curlys (Hanson did pretty much the same thing to the liberals). The greens and the liberals have both stated they will not support a mandatory filter and they intend to block it in the senate - so it's not going anywhere fast. - That, the balance of power thing and the preference deals are all public knowledge but are certainly not proof positive.
Perhaps I've watched to much "Yes Minister" but the test of my armchair theory will be if Fielding consistently votes with Labor on the big ticket items that are opposed by the liberals but supported by the greens. I don't hear Conroy personally supporting a mandatory filter (especially recently), what I hear is another Peter Garrett, ie: someone going through the motions of demonstrating party loyalty. Here is a random article [news.com.au] from a quick "fielding filter" search on google, try and find where Conroy personally supports it, go to the end and read what Fielding said.
"He's a headkicker - a politician who is in it for the politics"
I agree wholeheartedly but you have to get close to someone to kick them in the head, why else would he be forging ahead with what he knows will not pass the senate other than to kick someone's head? - Have any Machevellian theories as to who that someone is?