Telco CEO Asks For "Baby Bell Solution" For Australia

natecochrane writes "The CEO of Australia's No.2 telco, Optus, has called for a "Baby Bell" solution to handle what he says is a growing threat to competition in the emerging $43 billion Australian national fibre-broadband network. Paul O'Sullivan says that only by breaking up the network architect NBN Co and tendering out its services, overseen by an independent board (much like Australia's Reserve Bank the Fed), can competition be preserved. And he had a few choice words to say about Australia's 'No.2' ISP, iiNet: 'If you take into account we operate a cable network and not ADSL [primarily] we're still significantly larger than iiNet.'"

Comments

Oh pretty please Mr Government

[mjwx]

Do something about my competition, I dont want to compete, it's too hard.

The problem Optus has here is that it loses a valuable position as part of a copper monopoly. Optus and Telstra own pretty much all the copper in Oz (telephone and cable) and charge other ISP's, such as iinet a fortune to use it. Not to mention the DSLAM's they rent out to other ISP's. Once the NBN is completed Optus and Telstra have to compete on equal terms with competitive ISP's like iinet and Internode. NBNco leases the NBN fibre to any company that will pay the fee to lease the line, this includes Optus.

'If you take into account we operate a cable network

That can reach about 5% of Aussie homes, let me know when you were planning to cable up Vic Park, I'll be getting NBN by the end of the year. Given the reach of Optus's cable network, iinet is still number 2.

Bunch of self serving, conniving wankers. You've let the broadband situation get this bad in the first place, 15 years of doing next to nothing, you wouldn't even roll out ADSL2 until iinet gave you a swift kick in the arse. Well we're all sick of it and now the Government is doing what you refused to and you're having a big bloody cry over it.

Harden the fuck up Paul O'Sullivan.

Re:Oh pretty please Mr Government

[mjwx]

Optus don't own any POTS copper, telstra own 100% of that.

POTS which was laid by Telecom Australia, not Telstra.

For those of us that have just tuned in, Telstra is the privatised remnants of our public telecom, Telecom Australia which laid the copper around Oz. Telstra have been neglecting that infrastructure for the last 15 odd years.

They own a HFC cable network that was overbuilt by telstra's own HFC cable in almost every place they rolled it out

Which they are under no obligation to permit other ISP's access to, hence part of the copper monopoly. They also tried some backroom deals with Foxtel combining Optus Cable and Foxtel Pay TV services to try and better Telstra, Foxtel uptake simply suffered as a result.

HFC is also no real competitor to Fibre, it's a shared bus with a maximum speed of 100 Mb\s deployed in selected area's of 2 Australian cities (out of 18 locations with a population exceeding 100,000) where as the glass NBNco is installing will not top out at 1 Gb\s although 100 Mb\s is the best NBNco will be offering at the outset, will be available to 93% of Australian homes (fixed wireless and satellite will comprise the rest) and each link is a dedicated connection to the backbone.