Australia - National Broadband Network - Key Analysis November - December 2010

Synopsis

Late 2010 saw a watershed of developments around the NBN. As the broadband network was a key item in the 2010 election campaign the Government, the Greens and the Independents had the political will to move the NBN to the next stage. This resulted in the passing of the all-important legislation that was required to put the regulatory environment in place to support the NBN.

There were still the outstanding issues on the deployment of the NBN in greenfield developments and this was largely resolved along the lines the industry had been discussing with the government within the Digital Economy Industry Work Group (DEIWG). Also the participation of the other infrastructure providers (other than Telstra) needed to be resolved. This happened with the assistance of the ACCC, the decision being to create 120 points of interconnect (POIs).

With all of this in place NBN Co could now finalise its business plan and this was published in early December.

Furthermore the government delivered on its trans-sector initiatives, with significant initiatives and policy decisions in the areas of e-health and smart grids.

All of this is setting the scene for an extraordinary amount of work – this has already commenced but it will explode over 2011 and beyond. The business opportunities across various sectors are enormous and the international telecoms market is following with great interest the developments Down Under as they will set the scene for future telecoms developments around the world.