Has Telstra Got Anywhere To Go Other Than Wholesale As NBN Fibre Is Kicked Into Play?

COMMENT: Has Telstra got anywhere to go as the NBN put the big telco in their cross hairs?

Or is this a massive play by the Federal Government to sacrifice carrier revenues in an effort to build the NBN as a saleable business that Telstra could end up bidding for when it is privatised.

Telstra is caught between a rock and a hard place as their mobile sales fall and business is now given the option of dealing directly with a Company whose products Telstra, Optus and several other ISP’s has been flogging for the past few years.

This week’s NBN initiative is change of political direction by the Coalition government who are now looking to take customers away from carriers with a plan that will see customers paying for a higher price fibre connection with the connection free to a household free.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said “NBN will only build the expensive fibre lead-in if and when a customer orders a higher speed plan.”

Householders looking for vastly higher web speed will be able to have their homes connected by fibre to the network free of charge.

They will, however, pay higher prices for their broadband plan, in line with the $149 a month paid by consumers already connected directly by fibre.

These prices will continue to be set by retailers.

On Tuesday, NBN Co announced a similar plan for business. At a cost of $700 million, about 1.4 million businesses would be eligible to have fibre rolled out to their premises free of charge. It will spend an additional $300 million improving internet services in the regions.

The three initiatives – businesses, households, and the regions – add up to a $4.5 billion investment in faster services. The money will be borrowed.

The government will badge the upgrade as a recession-busting infrastructure initiative that should create 25,000 jobs, including 16,600 in industries such as construction, engineering, project management, transport and retail trade claims the AFR.

NBN Co said the free bandwidth offer to telcos had cost the network more than $80 million.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher, speaking on ABC News Breakfast, said the upgrade was all part of theNBN expansion  plan.

“With the volume rollout now largely completed, now there’s the opportunity to move to the next stage and this is very much consistent with what we said back in 2013, with our strategic review of the NBN,” he said.

“If we’d stuck with Labor’s plan, it would have been almost 5 million fewer homes. But, secondly, what this now allows is for more homes to be able to, should they choose to, order a higher-speed service.”

What the new initiative means is that two million Australian households will be able to demand fibre-to-the-home internet by 2023 as part of a $3.5 billion upgrade of the National Broadband Network in residential streets to begin within months.

The Morrison government says the major infrastructure investment will create as many as 25,000 jobs over the next two years as the existing fibre-to-the-node rollout is extended along streets across Australia.

I for one would be interested in moving to a direct fast fibre cable connection for a new house I am about to build, and I would have no hesitation dropping my Telstra account for a direct relationship with the NBN Corporation.

Because I am building a new house, I need to not only future proof the property for future and existing technology needs.

Fibre is the way to go as it allows one to feel confident that the multitude of devices now coming onto the market have the bandwidth to actually deliver the capabilities specified for the devices.

This could include 8K streaming, high speed gaming, 8K security cameras to a multitude of devices connected to the NBN fibre network via WiFi, and API’s that allow Zigbee or other connection protocol devices to be connected into one home network.

We are already seeing a boom in home networking via Zoom calls and this year we have seen new air conditioning, and appliances launched that can easily be controlled over an IP network. Then there is the lighting and eco control systems all of which need a fast network to perform.

As for Telstra their connected home initiative is in tatters, JB Hi Fi has the lions share of the handset market generating over $1.2 billion in sales, with Telstra paying them a multi-million-dollar fee each year for the privilege of connecting into their network.

In the B2b market Telstra has struggled to get their health initiative off the ground and their grand plan to sell cloud based apps such as Office 365, Adobe Creative Suite has also gone nowhere with their resellers and shop franchisee’s also unhappy with the lack of business coming in the door.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said “NBN will only build the expensive fibre lead-in if and when a customer orders a higher speed plan.” James Brickwood

Householders looking for vastly higher web speed will be able to have their homes connected by fibre to the network free of charge. They will, however, pay higher prices for their broadband plan, in line with the $149 a month paid by consumers already connected directly by fibre.

These prices will continue to be set by retailers.

The government will badge the upgrade as a recession-busting infrastructure initiative that should create 25,000 jobs, including 16,600 in industries such as construction, engineering, project management, transport and retail trade claims the AFR.

NBN Co said the free bandwidth offer to telcos had cost the network more than $80 million.