Backed by the full resources of Federal Govt, Senator Conroy’s...

Backed by the full resources of Federal Govt, Senator Conroy’s baby is busy expanding (inc duplicating TLS networks).

During the week we heard the national broadband network has hired Goldman Sachs, that leading investment bank, to negotiate all the financial and strategic challenges associated with the $43 billion project. (Not exactly an Australian Bank you notice).

The latest – Leighton Holdings Nextgen Networks was awarded the contract to lay out more than 6000km of fibre optic backbone links. These will pass 100 regional centres including Geraldton, Dawin and Broken Hill, to bring competing services to areas where Telstra is (normally) the only choice of broadband supplier.

Senator Conroy said, “These backbones, the first of NBN on the mainland, will stimulate competition and better broadband services across regional Australia.”
He said the project which would pass about 400,000 people in rural Australia, would create about 1000 full-time jobs.

Senator Nick Minchin said the backhaul project was a waste of money because it merely duplicates existing Telstra fibre and failed to take into account Australians who lived in areas where there was no access to fibre infrastructure.

Senator Minchin said the fibre duplication will cost $250M to Australian taxpayers; and “Not even Gough Whitlam would be as crazy as that.”