KEY POINTS:
Tens of thousands of Kiwis may have decided this year that the grass is greener in Australia, uprooting their lives to settle across the Tasman. But is the broadband any better?
Not really, says telecoms analyst Paul Budde.
Australia does do much better in the OECD broadband rankings
- claiming 12th spot out of 30 countries when it comes to broadband penetration, compared to our 20th place.
But few players across the Tasman have made a go of local loop unbundling, though iiNet, the former owner of ihug, has enjoyed some success after putting its equipment in Telstra's exchanges. But as with the bulk of New Zealand's broadband providers, who are glorified Telecom resellers, Australia's internet providers likewise resell Telstra's service where they don't have their own networks - speeds and feeds at lower prices.
It's that deadlocked situation that led Australia's Labor Party to formulate a plan to spend A$4.7 billion on a national fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network in conjunction with telecoms companies.
A group of telcos have lined up for a slice of the funding, including Telecom's Australian arm AAPT, which is part of the G9 consortium headed by Optus.
Did the fibre plan help Kevin Rudd and his left-leaning colleagues sweep into power?
"Obviously not on its own," says Budde.
"It's a generational change. Before it was 'Mr Howard', you could only see him in the distance. But every other speech Kevin Rudd gave in the run-up to the election mentioned broadband."
All the Australian players are now talking "open access" - meaning any fibre network built will be available on the same terms to all-comers and there's a strong lobby in favour of increasing the scope of the plan to include the fibre-to-the-home David Cunliffe talks of for New Zealand. Budde agrees, arguing that settling for the "halfway house" of laying fibre to streetside cabinets will just set up a regulatory nightmare in the future when companies want to go further, right to the customer's doorstep.
"There are plenty of holes in [the Labor plan]," says Budde, who is running a working party including over 100 interested telcos and industry groups to attempt to get some industry consensus on the proposal. "But the commitment is there to sit down with the industry and work it out."
He has reservations about the viability for everyone concerned of building a fibre network over Telstra's existing network footprint. The economics of that might work in Melbourne and Sydney, but not the rest of the country.
"The reason the G9 exists is to put pressure on the regulator," says Budde. "In the end, if necessary, they will build a network."
As Howard's Coalition Government ambled towards its ruinous election last month, it railroaded through a plan to give the appearance that it was tackling the broadband issue head on.
It committed A$1 billion to a joint venture between Optus and rural services company Elders to deliver broadband and phone services to rural Australia, using WiMax wireless technology.
Budde says the venture - known as Opel - could be a "waste of money" if it's not aligned with the big-picture plans Labor has for broadband.
Opel's WiMax foray has also been criticised on technical grounds. Critics argue that the technology Opel is proposing to use could quickly make the network obsolete, a fate that has befallen local wireless broadband player Woosh Wireless, which has thousands of customers but needs to undertake a costly move to WiMax to stay competitive.
"I was one of the people who really cheered Woosh on," admits Budde.
"At that time there was an opportunity, it made sense. Five years later, the game has changed."
The game now is running fibre cables - ultimately, all the way to homes and businesses.
Despite the major issues facing the telecommunications industries on both sides of the Tasman, Budde is also optimistic.
"I'm using New Zealand very often as an example," he says. "The important thing is leadership and vision. You have it now."
