PC Mag is reporting that Verizon is looking at a couple different ways to spread the good word of FiOS beyond the projected 18 million homes it’ll reach in 2010, maybe by using less, um, fibre after that, according to tech chief Mark Wegleitner.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has certainly been chatty lately. The Australian (which has really been on top of the broadband issue) is reporting today that the minister has come out and admitted that broadband in Australia is too expensive and revealed that a Senate inquity into the issue will be held later this year. He also recognised that Australia is one of the few countries in which ISPs meter broadband usage.
While this may all sound like it comes from the Department of Duh!, it’s actually nice to know that government is aware of these issues and thinking about them, which is rather more than could be said of the previous Coalition government.
Labor has even opened up the development of the FTTN to public commentary, as reported by our own Angus Kidman in APC — although weirdly they’re only accepting written comments and not online submissions. I guess that they want to winnow out the more hysterical online forum attendees. [The Australian and APC]
There’s a report in The Australian IT section today that has the managing director of BigPond saying that Telstra is the company best placed to implement the $4.7 billion FTTN network being financed by the federal govenment. Of course, he would say this, with BigPond being owned by Telstra and all.
“I can’t see how anybody other than Telstra can build a big, scaled and reliable broadband service for Australia because it is such a hard thing to do. It’s a huge project … it relies on a whole bunch of existing infrastructure and clearly Telstra is the right firm to do that job,” he told the Australian.
Actually, there’s a certain logic to what he’s saying — Telstra is the certainly the company with most experience implementing a broadband network in Australia. What has struck me, however, is how strange it would be for Telstra to win the tender, given it’s a large part of the problem the government is trying to fix.
