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The Federal Government has scrapped the controversial broadband tender process and has decided instead to form a new public/private company to build a national network as an infrastructure project.

Making the announcement today, Mr Rudd described the $43 billion fibre-to-the-home scheme as the single largest infrastructure project in the country’s history and said it would create 25,000 jobs a year during construction, with 37,000 in the busiest year of construction.

“It is the most ambitious, far-reaching, and long-term nation-building infrastructure project ever undertaken by an Australian government,” said Mr. Rudd.

The network will connect 90 per cent of homes to a network with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, with the remainder connected at 12 megabits a second.

The Government would hold a majority share in the company, which will also be part-owned by the private sector, and will invest $43 billion into the project over eight years.

The Government will then gradually sell off it’s share of the company five years after the project is completed.

Mr Rudd said the company would inject a “new competitive force” into the telecommunications market.

“Today we draw a line under a decade of policy area and neglect,” he said.

“This solves once and for all the core problem created when the previous prime minister privatised Telstra a decade ago without ever resolving the conflict of a private monopoly owning the network infrastructure and dominating the retail market.”

Mr Rudd said the broadband tender process was being scrapped because none of the submitted bids offered value for money to the taxpayer, but said anyone was open to invest in the new company.

Telstra was dropped from the bidding process last December after the Government rejected its proposal.

Telstra has failed to meet Sol Rujillo’s June 30 deadline for completing the migration of 5 million users to a new billing system, despite its claiming less than four months ago that the multi-million-dollar overhaul would be complete on time.

Mr Trujillo told analysts at Telstra’s half-yearly results in late February that the migration was “on plan” and that he would reveal whether the telco had “hit” its goal of completing the migration by the end of the 2007-08 financial year during full-year results in August.

However, a Telstra representative confirmed yesterday that progress was “satisfactory”, but that the migration of customers was still ongoing, despite the deadline.

The failure to meet the deadline is likely to see Telstra forced to continue pumping funds into running the legacy system as well as the new platform.

Telstra has not revealed any details of how many customers have already been migrated to the new billing platform.

Telstra has done an about-face on its broadband wholesale strategy by suggesting it might be willing to resell ADSL2+ high speed internet services to rival ISPs.

Telstra, which had delayed its switching on of more then 900 ADSL2+ exchanges for three years until April this year, has traditionally denied competing ISPs access to its ADSL2+ network in fear that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) would force it to resell the connection to competitors at low-ball prices.

At the time of Telstra’s opening of the 900 ADSl2+ ports, the company declined to state whether or not it would offer wholesale access to its freshly unveiled high-speed service.
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Telstra is taking aim at cash-strapped small business owners with the launch of $0 upfront laptop packages that come bundled with the telco’s Next G broadband service.

The launch comes as a response to Australia’s growing mobile workforce, which the telco estimates has exceeded more than three million Australian mobile workers.

“Building on the success of the $0 upfront mobile phone offers that really took off in the 90s, we’ve decided the time is right to extend the same deal to mobile broadband,” said Cathy Aston, executive director of Telstra business.
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NSW Police are seeking assistance from members of the public after the severing of Telstra telecommunications cables in Blacktown last week, which left 10,000 homes and businesses in Western Sydney without communications for two days.

Telstra reported that two of its cables had been severed ‘by vandals’ last Saturday after telephone, Internet, fax and EFTPOS lines went down in Blacktown, Rooty Hill, Erskine Park, Arndell Park, and Shalvey.

“This is a stupid, criminal act and the community should be rightly outraged,” said a Telstra spokesperson at the time.
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Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo announced this morning that the company has lodged its AU$5 million tender bond for the national fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network.

Speaking at the Macquarie Australian Equities conference in Melbourne this morning, the telco chief told attendants that an AU$5 million bank guarantee, along with much anticipated documentation detailing Australia’s network infrastructure, had been handed over to the Federal government in Canberra this morning, after Communications Minister Stephen Conroy wrote to Telstra and other carriers in February, insisting that they provide details on their network infrastructure.

The information was handed over to the government by senior Telstra executives today on the condition that it only be passed on to third parties after the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) agrees to the carrier’s confidentiality agreement, or when DBCDE’s own confidentiality agreement is provided and agreed to by Telstra.

According to Telstra, the company sees “no reason why this cannot happen immediately”.

Source & More Info: ZDNet

Telstra has secured a six-year, $162 million telecommunications contract with the Department of Defence (DoD) that is expected to result in savings of over $13 million per annum.

Under the contract’s terms, Telstra will supply a range of telecommunications services for defence staff, including mobile phones, fixed-line voice, fixed-line data and broadband services.

Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement, Greg Combets said the contract had been negotiated as a work order under the Australian Government Information Management Office whole of government telecommunications supply arrangements.
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The clock is ticking for Telstra customers, as the CDMA mobile network hits its expiration date at midnight tonight.

Customers who have put off switching their service before 12am will find themselves with useless mobiles tonight.

“At midnight AEST, our engineering team will progressively turn off the CDMA network and from that time our CDMA customers won’t be able to send or receive any phone calls, text, or data,” said Telstra country wide director, Gary Goldsworthy.

Mobile calls that take place at midnight will continue until 1am and Telstra assures that all 000 calls commencing before midnight will be allowed to continue until finished.
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The Telstra and Alcatel-Lucent 9000km submarine cable between Australia and the US that landed here last week will have to survive shark attacks and deliver 160,000 concurrent high-definition television channels to local homes.

Alcatel-Lucent’s ship, the Ile de Sein, began laying the cable between Sydney and Hawaii early this year. It’s expected to be operational at the end of 2008 and, at full capacity, will deliver 1.28Tbps into the country.

The telco will be hoping it avoids the shark attacks and typhoons that have threatened to bring down other trans-Pacific fibre-optic cables.

Several years ago, an incorrectly laid cable was almost cut when it was attacked by sharks, Telstra fibre optics director Matthew Shields said.
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Telstra will close down the CDMA mobile phone network within a fortnight despite fears regional customers will be denied adequate phone coverage.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy confirmed today that Telstra has met the requirements to allow the closure of its CDMA mobile phone network from April 28.

The 10-year-old CDMA network, which at one point served almost two million mainly regional users, has long been slated for closure, but the government forced Telstra to keep it open for an extra three months amid fears users would be disadvantaged.

“I am satisfied that Telstra has met the equivalence tests in its licence condition and has sufficiently rectified the problems I identified in January, including handheld handset coverage, customer information provision and the availability of equipment and services,” Senator Conroy said at a media conference in Sydney this morning.

“Today I urge anyone who still has a CDMA phone to make the necessary arrangements to switch to another network as quickly as possible.”
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Telstra and Alcatel-Lucent today demonstrated a new 9,000 kilometre submarine cable that will dramatically increase internet capacity between Australia and the United States.

The new cable, which will be landed at Tamarama Beach this week, can be scaled up to 1.28 Terabits* per second capacity between the two countries. At full capacity of 1.28 Terabits per second the cable is capable of carrying 160,000 concurrent high definition television channels.

“The explosion of user-generated online content means we need more capacity than ever before with the United States, which is already the destination for two-thirds of all Australian traffic on the internet,” Ms Kate McKenzie, Group Managing Director, Telstra Wholesale, said today.

“This cable is the largest ever built and owned by an Australian company. It’s another example of Telstra investing to ensure Australia can enjoy the health care, education and productivity benefits made possible by high-speed broadband technology,” Ms McKenzie said.

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Telstra is talking up its Next G network, claiming the wide coverage and data speeds of its Next G network could open up new opportunities for businesses across Australia to monitor and control remote sites without leaving their home or office.

According to Telstra this will come in handy for rural areas when it closes its 2G CDMA network on 28 April.

Telstra country wide director, Gary Goldsworthy, said the high data speeds of the Next G network provided high quality video streaming and enabled users to control remote cameras or equipment from anywhere they had an internet connection.

“Remote telemetry, which uses wireless technology to monitor and report data, is enhanced on Telstra’s Next G network. This provides businesses with a huge potential to improve efficiency, reduce operational costs and provide superior real time information,” Goldsworthy said.

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