Published on the 17/02/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Establishing NBN Co to roll out Australia’s national broadband network was a “spectacularly risky” strategy – the job would have been better left to the private sector…
While the Abbott government regards the establishment of NBN Co as a strategic error it is “hard at work turning around the NBN Co” and has been hiring “competent, experienced people to the board and management,” according to Paul Fletcher, parliamentary secretary to the minister for communications.
In a keynote address to the Techleaders Forum being held in Queensland this week Fletcher made clear that the coalition believes a private company would have been better equipped to handle the task of building the network.
He pointed to the progress made in New Zealand by Chorus, and in the UK by BT, compared to NBN Co which he said had previously had a poor implementation strategy.
The Abbott Government favours fibre to the node rather than the more expensive fibre to the home plan of the previous Government, with satellite and wireless picking up more of the slack for rural and remote Australia. This will require a new agreement with Telstra which had previously inked an $11 billion deal in return for decommissioning its copper network and transferring customers onto the NBN.
Asked how negotiations were proceeding with Telstra, Fletcher said only that the government had inherited a set of contractual obligations, that discussions to renegotiate were underway, but gave no indication how they were progressing or when they might be concluded.
With regard to Government plans to “get ICT policy back on track” Fletcher said that the preference was to establish an environment “so the private sector is best placed to capture the opportunities”. This, he said, would require making regulatory burdens as low as possible, providing access to skills and encouraging vigorous competition.
He described the private sector as the “beating heart” of the digital economy, a view cemented during a trip Fletcher and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull made to Silicon Valley in January. To support private sector activity he noted the current review of employee share option programmes was intended to encourage start-up activity in Australia and also the review of crowdfunding mechanisms that is similarly underway.
He described the plans revealed by Attorney General George Brandis last week, which could require Australian ISPs to block access to sites used to breach copyright, as an attempt to protect legitimate rights.
“We recognise jobs, wealth and prosperity are created by the private sector…that is as true in the digital economy as in the old economy.”
The author attended the Techleaders event as a guest of Media Connect
