lets not forget

With all the focus on telstra and its high charges/monopoly on copper etc we forget a few things.

An alternative BB pipe will come at a huge cost and because it was sold to the OZ public on the 98% coverage it will be uneconomic from day 1.
That leaves the govt with the following choices
a. Abandon the scheme
b. Subsidize the scheme
c. recognise that they have to modify the scheme to take advantage of existing capacities (ie foxtel cable) and newer technologies (wireless/satelite for the bush)

I dont believe that the numbers will stack up for the other consortiums as they will be locked out of foxtel and copper and will have to build the whole thing.


On the other hand, Telstra can pick the low hanging fruit and just provide to the economically viable areas via extension of existing and bolt on solutions.

This ironically leaves the govt in exactly the same position as it was. That is having to provide the infrastructure to the bush themselves at a huge cost to tax payers.

I believe Rudd has misjudged Telstra (not the other way around) The govt thought that telstra would opt in to the process merely to protect their monopoly with copper.
But why should they? There is no reason to protect the copper monopoly revenue (by replacing it with BB) when those revenues from the new network will be eaten up by an uneconomic political vision based capital expenditure.

"Oh but we have other tenderers" you might say. But do we?
The miniscule cost to prepare a tender, is a no brainer investment , to keep yourself in the process.
Where the men will be sorted from the others will come much later when the numbers are crunched.
Optus: the only other operator to put any meaningful resources into australia , stopped the roll out of their fibre network very early. that was in the middle of the most profitable cities in australia. I wonder how they would feel about supplying into the country areas!

Then we have the issue that telstra will quickly roll out into the economic areas extensions/bolt ons to their existing system with a view to grabbing market share before the others have a chance to start construction.Telstra will end up with a very cost effective network that could undercut the other operators should they proceed.
yes the govt could subsidize those operators to keep them in the game.. but is that really what is politcally acceptabel given that th others are likely to be owner by overseas interests