Rural Broadband - a Leap Backwards?
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Posted Fri 27 August 2010 @ 7:04 a.m. by Ernie Newman
You really do have to wonder what's going on with government's rural broadband project - and inferentially, what spillover there might be to the urban Ultra Fast Broadband process.
Minister Joyce announced yesterday that the rural project was being re-cast so that only national bids will be contemplated.
Regional aspirants and bidders such as Vector and the Regional Fibre Group are putting a brave face on it. But the reality is that this fundamentally changes the game. The starting point was noble - a brave new world where innovative local investors with local know-how and loyalty could take part and have their offerings woven into a national solution. Now we’ve descended to an unimaginative “nationwide only” bidding process, where potentially the number of participants will be one and a bit.
Opportunity lost? Betcha.
Rural customers aside, the people I feel really sorry for are the dozen or so regional networks who have invested dollars and sweat over several years to give their regions a head start in the digital economy and carve a business opportunity for themselves. Many of those were bidders, independently. Well, up until this time yesterday they were. Now they have been told their only hope of taking part is to snuggle up to one of the "Mister Big" national bidders who they thought was their arch-competitor.
Yesterday I gave this presentation to the annual forum of the Economic Development Agencies - written without knowledge of the Minister's announcement. I'm betting that one day the key players in government will wish they'd taken TUANZ's calls for a dedicated digital agency, and a national digital architecture, much more seriously.
Categories: Broadband | Fixed line carriers | Innovation | ISPs | TUANZ policy