Soon, Australia will see government run fiber network all over the country, if government succeeds in its mission to convince Telstra to run with the scheme which aims to get rid of cable and copper lines and switch over its consumers to the open access national fiber plan. After the project is over, there will be a complete transformation in the country in terms of size and no more inheritance telecommunications will be there.
The government is determined to fast forward with its $43 billion fiber network irrespective of Telstra go with it or not, however, Telstra’s decision has its own importance which could not be ignored as it has a large number of subscribers and its has done much more to retain them with it.
Even though, it was expected unnecessary in the beginning as there were no benefits but after KPMG AND McKinsey emphasized the fact frequently it was noticed that new changes may play a vital role in accelerating the industry growth.
As Telstra has a large number of subscribers in the country and it was unavoidable to become a long lasting part of Australian golden future, which is why after one year of consistent negotiation it accepted the contact. Due to huge project of AU$9 billion, it gave its nod to transfer its customers from cable and copper wire to the new fiber network. In addition, it also agreed to hand over all its ducts and existing fiber backhaul for the purpose of new fiber network.
Once the dream project is achieved, Australian homes will have direct open access fiber network in the country. Some isolated areas are served with higher speed satellites and high speed wireless. The fiber network will be operated as main infrastructure company leasing access to Internet Service Provider interested in nondiscriminatory prices. The move will pay the way for major competition for the ISP SPACE.
Stephen Conroy-Australia’s Minister for Communications-appreciated the historic deal and said that government partnership with Telstra is the indication of reduction in the cost of building out network. According to the statement issued from Conroy’s office, this is one of the great achievements in the delivery of largest nation making infrastructure plan in the history. This means there will be more productivity and stronger economy.
The deal is not complete as there are some formalities like government first have to sort out agreements detail with Telstra, then shareholders will decide to put a stamp or not. After the plan is approved by the shareholders, government will have the option of controlling Telstra’s emergency call services, phone services and payphones.
This is possible only in Australia in comparison to other countries like America; nobody can image something like this happening. The government is going with AT&T making it public through the announcements that it is surely going to build a huge fiber network making all copper telephone lines out of date and this depends on AT&T whether it want to joint or die forever in the market.
