Telstra Group Managing Director for Public Policy Communications, Dr Phil Burgess, today announced that Telstra’s high speed broadband (ADSL 2+) rollout was ahead of schedule, with exchanges servicing over two million households already upgraded, highlighting the decision of the former Government to award nearly $1 billion of public money to the SingTel Optus Elders joint venture (OPEL) as an example of waste and abuse that should be stopped immediately.
"Telstra’s ADSL 2+ rollout is ahead of schedule and the Next G™ network recently hit 99% population coverage* - if the new Government is looking to reduce government spending on wasteful projects they need look no further than the $1 billion OPEL deal,” Dr Burgess said.
“Last month Telstra committed to upgrading more than 900 exchanges with faster broadband (ADSL 2+) without any public money – most of them in regional Australia – and as of this week we are one week and 100 exchanges ahead of schedule.
“And our Next G™ network peak speeds will be increased to 21 Mbps by the end of this year and 42 Mbps in 2009.
“OPEL is a perfect example of unnecessary Government spending that could be ripped out without consequence,” Dr Burgess said. “It is a total duplication of existing commercial services and delivers nothing extra to Australians who do not have broadband."
“The simple fact is that investments by Telstra shareholders – not taxpayers – already exceed what OPEL has said it would do with nearly $1 billion of taxpayers’ money,” Dr Burgess said.
On February 6, Telstra announced that more Australian homes and small businesses will soon have access to high-speed broadband with the activation of high-speed ADSL2+ broadband at more than 900 telephone exchanges serving 2.4 million consumers and businesses across every state and territory.
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 56kbps dial-up connection, and up to 78 times faster than a standard 256kbps ADSL connection.
Dr Burgess said in contrast, OPEL had achieved nothing.
“The OPEL plan looked dodgy from the start – the former Government’s tender process for allocating nearly $1 billion of taxpayers' money looked dodgy, the network coverage claims were dodgy, the network speeds were dodgy, and after eight months of inaction it’s clear the network rollout schedules were dodgy.
“SingTel Optus needs to come clean and tell the Australian public what they will actually do with nearly $1 billion of taxpayers’ money – where will OPEL provide ADSL2+ and wireless broadband access that doesn't already have it from Telstra or other providers?”
Dr Burgess added, “And maybe the evaluators at ACMA, ACCC, and the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy should look into the taxpayer-funded OPEL plan the same way they scrutinise commercially-funded success stories, such as the Next G™ network, which brings high-speed wireless broadband to 99% of Australians and is recognised globally as one of the most advanced mobile networks in the world. The ‘look the other way’ bias of agencies in relation to OPEL is quite astounding.”
* As with all mobile networks, coverage depends on where the customer is, the device they use, and whether they use an external antenna.