Australia Cancels Broadband Deal

[HardOCP News]

The Australian government's minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy has canceled a billion-dollar agreement with the OPEL consortium to build an Outback broadband network, saying the plan did not meet contract conditions and coverage needs.

Analysts said the termination of the network funding with OPEL will likely make an upcoming tender for the government's planned nationwide high-speed broadband network more competitive. New Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised to provide 98 percent of Australian homes with high-speed Internet services in the next five years

 

[Azhar]

WiMax meets Australia. Failure and all.

 

[4keatimj]

You have to remember this deal was started when the old government was still in office, and most likely did not work with the new governments plan for broadband internet.

Secondly, the major problem was our major telco out here (Telstra) was having a major gripe with the proposal, saying that they 'would be left in a bad business position should the contract be accepted', and had all sorts of threats to go with it.

There are a few ISPs out here doing great things with data communications (PIPE Networks, Internode, et. al.) to move traffic in and out of the country, all we need now is good network delivery to each home - easier said than done, remembering that for a lot of houses, the nearest exchange can be hundreds of kilometres away.