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Australian opposition plans to scrap broadband network
AFP - Wednesday, August 11
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Australian opposition plans to scrap broadband network
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SYDNEY (AFP) - – Australia's opposition Tuesday pledged to scrap an ambitious national broadband network in favour of a cheaper patchwork of services, but the move was quickly condemned by critics.
The opposition coalition said if elected this month, it would replace the government's 43 billion dollar (39.4 billion US) fibre optic network with a 6.3 billion "backbone" to be used by competing telecom firms.
"We make no apology for not spending 43 billion dollars of taxpayers' money running fibre down every street," said shadow communications minister Tony Smith.
The new plan involves spending two billion Australian dollars on fixed wireless networks across the huge country and another 750 million dollars to allow homes to receive high-speed Internet.
Other homes would receive the Net via fixed lines or by satellite, connecting 97 percent of homes by 2017 with a minimum speed of 12 megabits per second.
The plan would replace the government's initiative to wire 93 percent of homes with high-speed fibre optic cable capable of up to 100 megabits per second.
Singapore-owned Optus, Australia's second-largest telco, said there was a fundamental and philosophical difference between the coalition and Labor plans.
"They think they can take an incremental approach and gradually get better at fixing these problems by targeting certain things, whereas the ALP (Australian Labor Party) has moved for root and branch reform," said government and corporate affairs spokesman Maha Krishnapillai.
"It's a lot less money but we'll get a lot less for it as well."
Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said the opposition's plan had some merits but "lacks a vision and a strategy for the future".
"It is like having many parts of a car spread out on the floor, with no plan on how to put it all together," he said.
He said ineptness when the conservatives were last in power had left Australia "at the bottom of the international broadband ladder" and the policy would take the nation backwards
"For more than a decade the coalition tried to create facilities-based competition and they failed," he said.
"It doesn't make sense to compete on infrastructure ... How is the opposition going to achieve this by simply referring back to the failed policies of the past?"
Smith said the Liberal/National plan would see "97 percent of the population has a base line minimum 12 megabits per second service (mbps) peak speed" by 2016.
"The coalition's plan will stimulate a vibrant, private sector-based broadband market, with government involved to encourage competition and ensure services reach all Australians," he added.
By contrast, the ruling Labor party plans to deliver 100mbps to 93 percent of the population, with the remaining seven percent to get speeds of up to 12mbps using wireless and satellite, by 2017.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy said the coalition plan would "consign Australia to the digital dark ages, destroy jobs and risk our economy for decades."
"This policy is a return to the failed era of bandaid broadband policies that left Australia lagging behind countries like Korea, Japan, Singapore and much of Europe," he said.
"Today we have seen again that Tony Abbott and the coalition don't understand the technology of the future, and cannot be trusted to make the decisions necessary to build a modern Australian economy," added Conroy.
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