Today the Australian government announced its decision on submission to build the new National Broadband Network. Telstra put itself out of the bid last year by putting in an incomplete submission. So who of the remaining tenders were to take the cake?
None of them it seems. The government decided that none of the bids were up to scratch. So awarded the contract to itself.
The government announced its intention to establish a new public company to build the network. Spending $43 billion on the new entity to create a new fibre network. And interestingly, they now intend to do fibre to the home, rather than fibre to the node. Which seems like a much better proposal.
A question remains though, which a friend put forward: If the government is building the network, is this so it can bypass all the ISPs, and more easily implement its own filtering/censorship policy?
- National broadband network gets go ahead (SMH, 7 Apr 2009)
- Internet up to 60 times faster (SMH, 7 Apr 2009)
- Have the Aussies backed a loser? (SMH, 7 Apr 2009)
- Government spends $43 billion to establish National Broadband Network (ComputerWorld, 7 Apr 2009)
- ISPs hail National Broadband Network announcement (ComputerWorld, 7 Apr 2009)
- NBN plan scrapped; govt seeks new partners (Australian IT, 7 Apr 2009)
