Synopsis
With the FttH National Broadband announcement in 2009 life will be brought back into this industry. There has been very little broadband infrastructure developments since 2005. Elsewhere the broadband infrastructure market is undergoing changes that are unprecedented in the history of the 100-year-old network. Internally, Telstra is in the process of upgrading its network to NGN but has not started rolling out innovations. We desperately need open networks so that competition can take place over this network and this is set to happen with the new plans. Local loop unbundling and DSLAMs have seen an explosion and are critical developments on the road towards FttH, copper based networks will still remain the major infrastructure for years to come. In order to tap into new revenue streams FttH based NGNs are also needed to develop trans-sector models for healthcare, education, smart grids, smart buildings and smart cities. This will require as a host of value-added wholesale services such data centres, content hosting, billing, cloud computing and other activities essential to the emerging digital economy.