Home >  Articles > Telstra opens the gate for high-speed broadband across the country

•  
•  
•  
•  

While Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo is in Barcelona at the 2008 3GSM world congress this week, he is receiving some plaudits from industry commentators for what is considered a breakthrough in the nexus between the government and Telstra on high-speed broadband access.

It's not entirely clear whether the ACCC has come to the party on regulatory issues of access but Telstra has made a step in the right direction. The availability of high-speed broadband access for Australian homes and small businesses got a whole lot better last week with the announcement that Telstra will activate high-speed ADSL2+ broadband at more than 900 telephone exchanges serving 2.4 million consumers across every state and territory.

Trujillo made the announcement in Canberra with the Prime Minister, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP, and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy.

More Australian homes and small businesses will have access to high-speed broadband after the government made clear it did not consider a compelling case had been made for regulating third-party access to the service - an assurance sought by Telstra for more than one year.

"This simple act of the new government unlocks the potential of high-speed broadband for households and businesses around Australia, enabling more people to fully participate in remote education, send or receive X-rays and medical files, rapidly download videos or run their business without sacrificing time with their families," said Trujillo.

High-speed ADSL2+ broadband can provide network speeds of up to 20 Megabits per second (Mbps) depending on factors including the distance of a user from the exchange. ADSL2+ can provide speeds of 12 to 20 Mbps to users within 1.5 kilometres of an exchange, and approximately 8 Mbps to users three kilometres from an exchange. These speeds are up to 350 times faster than a standard 56 Kbps dial-up connection, and up to 78 times faster than a standard 256 Kbps ADSL connection.

The extension of high-speed broadband was made possible after the government made clear that it does not consider there is a compelling case to regulate these services at this point and that, if there were an attempt to regulate them in future, the existence of other competing broadband platforms would be highly relevant.

In a letter to Telstra describing the government's approach, Minister Conroy said: "[Because] Telstra is in a position to enable ADSL2+ in a number of exchanges across Australia, in metropolitan, regional and rural areas, I would welcome a decision by Telstra to switch on ADSL2+ services in as many exchange areas as possible. Switching on these services would benefit the national interest, delivering significant economic and social benefits to Australian consumers who cannot currently access high-speed broadband."

Trujillo said: "Regulatory forbearance will be good for consumers because it permits the rapid deployment of broadband; good for shareholders because Telstra will not be forced to re-sell to competitors services they can provide simply by choosing to invest their own capital; and good for the nation because it encourages investment and facilities-based competition."

Telstra is still committed to investing more than $4.1 billion in an open-access fibre-to-the-node broadband service that would be available for competitors to use on competitive terms. Telstra will participate in the process to be established by the new government to make sure Australia has a high-speed broadband service in place at the earliest possible date.

On the same day as Telstra made its ADSL2+ announcement, Telecommunications analyst firm Market Clarity released a report that analyses the relationship between new regional broadband initiatives (such as OPEL and Telstra's NextG) and existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Market Clarity has also found surprisingly high ADSL2/2+ availability in Australia. More than 9.6 million individuals in over 3.7 million households live in exchange areas in which ADSL2/2+ has been deployed. And with Telstra's announcement last week, an extra 2.4 million customers will gain access to faster broadband.

In a report just released, IDC states there is a potentially "bigger picture" situation evolving as Telstra plans to switch on ADSL2+ in over 900 exchanges, which could potentially have significant flow-on effects to the greater communications market and in particular, the regional and rural consumers of Australia.

"We believe that the announcement from Telstra to activate their remaining ADSL2+ ready exchanges as a result of ministerial assurance and the government's requirement to cull more than $10 billion dollars of funding are related. As a result, the OPEL funding will potentially be a casualty of larger macro economic inflation management processes," said David Cannon, programme manager, telecommunications at IDC.

"The activation of the ADSL2+ exchanges gives regional and rural communities metro-like broadband services and will counterbalance any negative public sentiment should the Opel funding be withdrawn," said Cannon.

The balance between the ACCC and the government's relationship will be increasingly strained. The government's decision to provide assurances to Telstra may be interpreted as a backdown, encouraging Telstra to ignore the regulator and engage in legal sabre-rattling for extended periods of time while Telstra enjoys market share monopoly and profits.

• Share this Article:
• digg this
• add to del.icio.us
• StumbleUpon
• RSS Feeds