I was quite dissapointed by this interview. Kate came across as waffling on several major points.

When asked about matching prices with Terria she gave a non-answer. When asked about the time it would take she tried to evade the question before giving a ball park figure of 3-5 years. what my point is, is that that 3-5 years answer should have come first. "Current estimates are 3-5 years to cover the entire country from starting work, varying on snags and unseen advantages of course." would have been a great answer that let everyone know that Telstra was thinking about winning, that Telstra had a plan etc etc. I'm going to not comment on the part about the legal action.

In summary, I had an oppurtunity to be told a little from technical standpoint recently, I was shown the inside of a manhole by a few technicians, and finding out how much goes on in an exchange and how cables are pressurized and so on and so forth reaffirmed my belief that Telstra was the company that would win FTTN because noone else could handle it. But then I saw this and I'm not so sure anymore.

Kate McKenzie hit the nail on the head when she questioned the bone fides of TERRiER. How in the name of all things honest can Michael Egan say that TERRiER could supply for between 29 and 50 dollars when for weeks he has been bleating that TERRiER needed an extension of time and more information from Telstra before he could formulate numbers.

I believe the $29-$50 price comes from the G9's previous FTTN proposal to the Federal Government in 2007. Similar figures were mentioned in news articles when the ACCC rejected the proposal late last year.