Australia - Regional - The OPEL Network

Synopsis

The report has been archived and has not been updated. In June 2007 the previous government announced that OPEL, a joint venture wholesale company between Optus and Elders, was the successful bidder for the Australian Government’s $600 million Broadband Connect program. Following the selection of OPEL, the Government decided to allocate a further $358 million to enable the OPEL network to go further, resulting in the extension of high speed broadband to 99% of Australians. Optus and Elders were to complement the Government’s funding with cash and in-kind contributions totalling at least $917 million. In April 2008 however, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy cancelled the Opel contract claiming departmental analysis of Opel’s mapping and testing found it would cover just 72% of identified under-served premises, not the 90% required.

Table of Contents

• 1. Synopsis
• 2. OPEL Analysis – Postmortem
• 3. Broadband Connect
  • 3.1 Regional wholesale access network
  • 3.2 Broadband Connect contract awarded
• 4. Opel contract terminated by government
• 5. OPEL Regional Broadband Network – historical overview
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 Backbone network
  • 5.3 OPEL Wireless
  • 5.4 OPEL ADSL2+
  • 5.5 Analysis of Developments in early 2008
  • 5.6 Opel maybe required to replicate Unwired’s WiMAX solution
• 6. Analyses of the OPEL and Australia Connected plans
  • 6.1 A good step forwards
  • 6.2 Telstra now forced to strike back
  • 6.3 Mix of infrastructure deployments
  • 6.4 What next Telstra?
  • 6.5 Now we also have a vendor war - HSDPA versus WiMAX
• 7. Other regional networks
• 8. Related reports