There is no doubt that Australia needs high-speed broadband if it is going to survive in the future. Speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia business briefing in Sydney on Tuesday, Telstra's Group Managing Director for Public Policy and Communications, Dr Phil Burgess, said that high-speed broadband is serious business for the country.

“Australia’s future competitiveness, productivity as a nation and our ability to survive in the 21st century is going to depend on high-speed broadband connectivity and yet we are toying with it,” Dr Phil said at the briefing.

Dr Phil said that the delaying in the National Broadband Network (NBN) Request for Proposal (RFP) process was holding Australia back.

“Broadband means more for Australia than any other country in the world so that we can have high-speed broadband connections within the country and between Australia and the rest of the world,” Dr Phil said.

“Yet, we are in a process where the NBN RFP is pretending that there are seven or eight other groups that can build this national broadband network.

“But to build a National Broadband Network to the specifications, it is going to require deploying around 80,000 nodes across the country. They all have to be manufactured either in the US or the EU as that’s where you make them. Then they have to be transported to Australia, put on trains, and then hauled out to 80,000 sites around the country.

“Who has the ability to do this? How many of these companies who are bidding for this have already reserved assembly lines to produce the 80,000 nodes? We have,” Dr Phil said.

“This is not a game. This is serious business for the country. And Telstra is the only company that can seriously do it.”