Conroy Demands Cost of Fixing His Uncosted Network
Senator Conroy’s claims that the Coalition needs to provide costings on how to fix his massive overspend on the National Broadband Network hits a new level of chutzpah, even by his very high standards.
This is, after all, the same man who:
- Committed to a $43 billion national Fibre to the Home network without any cost benefit analysis.
- Was telling Australians as late as last December that the $16 billion paid to Telstra would be included in the capital cost of the NBN
- Cancelled construction contracts because no tenders met his budget. He still has not locked in construction contracts for various second release sites, even though construction was slated to begin in the second quarter of 2011.
- Could not, until yesterday, tell Australians what they would be paying for internet services over the NBN. The retail price schedule published by Internode is up to 32% higher than the retail prices forecast by the NBN Corporate Plan.
As Senator Conroy knows, the Coalition cannot put a definitive dollar figure on the cost of sorting out his financial disaster because he has not released sufficient financial information for anyone, including Telstra shareholders, to analyse or understand the deals with Optus and Telstra.
And when the Parliament’s Joint NBN Committee sought answers from NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley about the cost of the construction contracts he claimed he cannot reveal those details because they are “commercial in confidence” – even though, by law, network providers will be unable to compete with the NBN.
2 Responses to “Conroy Demands Cost of Fixing His Uncosted Network”
More misleading information, Malcolm? Dear oh dear.
Let’s start with the headline…
The NBN is not uncosted. It has a budget, and by all accounts is meeting it.
True that Conroy stuffed up the Telstra payments in the 2UE interview. However, the fact remains that the Telstra payments are funded from NBN Co revenue over time, and do not add anything to the required capital of the NBN.
Conroy didn’t “cancel the tenders”, NBN Co did. And it was clearly the correct course of action, considering since then they have signed construction tenders for NSW, ACT and QLD on budget. They have also signed construction tenders for Tasmania 2nd release. Negotiations for the remaining states are being undertaken under the same terms as the successful ones for NSW/ACT/QLD. They have also signed wireless and satellite contracts, on time and budget. Wireless is actually scheduled to be finished 4 years ahead of the original schedule.
Nice job misleading on the Internode pricing, but let’s get it into perspective. Internode is a premium ISP, and while some of their NBN pricing is above the NBN projection, their ADSL pricing is also above average. Their NBN plans also include a phone line and phone calls.
Internode’s NBN pricing is actually identical to their ADSL pricing. Let’s wait and see what the other ISPs come in at, shall we?
Finally, it is certainly not true that no other network providers can compete with the NBN. Anyone is free to build a fixed network, so long as they do it from a level playing field with NBN Co. ie, they must offer services on an open-access wholesale-only basis. Just like NBN Co are required to do.
Fiat…
Fiat picture…