Broadband money better spent on on R&D, says reseller

Local resellers have come out with mixed reactions to the Federal Government’s broadband proposal. The majority of resellers CRN spoke to felt positive about the Government’s announcement however others felt the plans were nothing worth getting excited about.

Under the Australia Connected plan, the Federal Government claims it will provide 12 megabit per second broadband services to thousands of rural and regional communities.

The new network will be built by OPEL, a joint-venture between Optus and Elders. The consortium has been awarded $958 million of funding from the government, with a possible $1 billion in reserves. OPEL is also providing $900 million of its own funds for the project.

Mathew Dickerson, network consultant at Axxis Technology was less then impressed with Coonan’s announcement.

“NextG technology is meant to do 14.4 megabit now. So an announcement about 12 megabit broadband by 2009 doesn’t excite me at all,” said Dickerson.

Dickerson was not impressed about the Federal Government spending money on rolling out ADSL as he believes the Government would naturally continue to roll ADSL2+.

“Dubbo has already got it and Parts of Orange is getting ADSL 2+. It’s like the Government making an announcement that it’s going to roll out phone lines. By the time its 2009, 12 megabits will be a slow connection,” he said.

Dickerson said the Government is better off actually spending the $958 billion on research and development into wireless technology.

“Australia’s population is fairly sparsely populated, the Government needs to look at how wireless technology might be able to better connect Australia in one go. We need proper high speed access, which really covers the radius of Australia’s land mass,” said Dickerson.

He believes the Government needs to be a bit “cleverer then looking at what the US is doing and do something about the local broadband that fits in with the country.

However Dave Stevens, managing director at Brennan IT said there are two key areas where he feels the channel will benefit from the proposed broadband strategy and this includes improving service delivery in regional areas, and pricing.

“The proposed strategy will allow us to increase the level of service we provide our clients and the wireless service will also reduce the lead-times for a number of companies, especially those in regional areas,” said Stevens.

He said pricing is another area where many providers will benefit. Personally Brennan has been hurt from a price competitiveness perspective of our regional access links.

“We expect this new service to reduce the pricing and make us more competitive in this area,” he said.

Customers would also benefit from these plans, according to Stevens.

“They will no doubt be very happy as this will either allow them to increase the efficiency of their regional locations by having faster connectivity or help to reduce the cost of their current services,” he said.

It may also influence their decisions when thinking about moving offices, with organisations that need high speed in certain geographies, currently limited to high speed access. Stevens said “this will open that up considerably”.

Mal Shaw general manager of sales at Express Data said from its business point of view, the announcement would be good news for its network integrator partners.

“I think for many years we have been representing information and communication technologies. Anything that can benefit the community in gaining a wider access to these types of products can only be positive from our point view,” he said.

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