AU National Broadband Network Signs $11 Billion Deal With Telstra 120
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government has signed an $11 billion deal with the country's largest telco, Telstra, to acquire the telco's physical infrastructure and migrate customers to the National Broadband Network. The NBN is a 100Mbps open access fiber network that will be rolled out to 94% of the Australian population, with wireless and satellite to cover the remainder. The deal marks a large step forward for the new network, as without a deal to bring Telstra's customers onboard, the NBN's viability was in question."
Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe now the Australian people won't get fucked by Telstra any longer. Seriously, that's got to be one of THE worst ISPs I've seen people use.
I've had more stable video conference calls on a 56k dialup.
Re:Yeah... (Score:1, Insightful)
The involvement of Telstra with this is far worse than the government. How bad are they?
Their Wikipedia page had to be locked because it kept being edited to read "They are a bunch of cunts"
The majority of their customers are the elderly and uninformed, layovers from when they had a monopoly. They never inform customers of rate cuts or better plans.
I found out recently my father was paying $270 a month plus call costs for his mobile - the same plan he had when he first got one of those suit case mobile phones with the first mobile roll out in Australia... they ARE a bunch of cunts.
Re:What's with all the Australia news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Australia is currently spearheading innovation in Western censorship and control. Think of it like MSDN for governments.
Re:We found the missing step (Score:3, Insightful)
4. Profit! (for the Telstra shareholders)
Well it would be about time for them
This is Great (Score:5, Insightful)
This will save the government billions of dollars in trench digging and pole construction. This is a great sign that the NBN won't be scrapped by any upcoming parties.
On the other hand since the NBN is essentially going to either make Telstra's service a niche product or drive the company into bankruptcy, you'd think they'd just nationalize their assets anyways. But at least this way the shareholders, most of which are common Australian families, will get something out of it.
Nice if the US had such a thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The Telstra-NBN deal illustrates how the telecom industry should be restructured.
In the US, recent policy has moved in exactly the opposite direction, towards more vertical integration, so the telephone companies, who own wires built with monopoly money, don't have to let competing ISPs use them at all. They only have to let competitive phone companies (CLECs) use them under certain circumstances, which are shrinking; this basically is limited to old copper wire in urban areas and town centers.
A "LoopCo" would be a company that owns the outside wire and leases it equally to all comers, building fiber for all who want to rent it, even cable. One fiber plant is a lot easier to afford than two or three. The original NBN plan would have built a new fiber plant to compete with Telstra; as customers moved off of Telstra's old copper network, Telstra would have lost money. Telstra blinked: They're selling their existing plant to NBN, so that they will be the biggest wholesale customer, not a competitor. Telstra wins: They get to use the new network, and get paid A$11B for their old wire. The country wins: They get NBN's new fiber, and don't have to fight Telstra all the way, or pay twice.
The Bells in the US do not see it this way. Nor does the FCC, which is squarely in their pocket. Expect the US to fall farther and farther behind, as the farce called "National Broadband Plan" leads to more of the same, just with higher taxes to subsidize CenturyTel, TDS, and other rural subsidy whores who can use the subsidy money to put local wireless ISPs, who are not eligible for subsidies (only one subsidy recipient in a given place - it's literally a monopoly fund) out of business.
Re:Good ( for the government ) (Score:3, Insightful)
Provision of last-mile services are not commercially viable, virtually every network of this type has been built with government funds.. If such a network comes under private ownership it will always be a monopoly because it isn't commercially viable to build any competing infrastructure.
Such infrastructure should always have remained controlled by a non profit wholesale provider, and let third parties brand and offer services to end users.
Re:What's with all the USAian news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems like every day there's a story about AT&T, Verizon, "cable" and "digital switchovers". It's just one country, right?
Re:We found the missing step (Score:3, Insightful)
Labor could have done this right with clean new equipment, new telcos and worlds best practice.
Now we have the same old rust belt tech grafted on.
The same crushed ducts, digital loop carrier DLC protecting telco leaders getting rehabilitated with public funding.
The only effort put into national networking was to stifle, silence and suppress any talk of one.
Re:FUD. (Score:3, Insightful)
Splitting telstra into retail / wholesale is a good idea.... but we just sold the thing for about $20b, and now we're buying back the wholesale half at the same time we're going to replace the infrastructure anyway?
And why on earth would the viability of the network be in question without telstra's customers? Surely a faster / better built fiber network would have a queue of customers beating down their door?
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
This pretty much sums it up. THey're a bunch of money grabbing cunts, but if you pay (the exorbitant amount) for a high grade service, you actually get a high grade service.
To some people (businesses) this is important.
Home use though? Telstra? You're fucking crazy :D