Angus Kidman02 April 2008, 5:03 PM
The Australian Government has pulled the plug on its $1billion national WiMax plan, citing inadequate coverage.
OPEL is no more, so regional future hopes for broadband now lie largely with the still-in-development National Broadband Network (NBN) Scheme.
Minister for Broadband Senator Stephen Conroy today announced that it was cancelling the billion dollar regional broadband project, being co-developed by Optus and Elders, because the proposed plan failed to meet the coverage terms of the original contract.
The government's lack of enthusiasm was evident last week when Conroy spoke of future plans. "We said that we would honour any existing contract," he said on Friday when asked about earlier comments that OPEL was "a dog of a product". "What we're examining at the moment is OPEL's implementation plan. If that meets the contract, they'll get the money." Turns out they won't.
The key sticking point is whether the OPEL network would provide coverage to 90% of what are described as "under-served premises" within its coverage area. "DBCDE performed an analysis of the detailed testing and mapping undertaken by OPEL, and determined that the OPEL network would cover only 72% of identified under-served premises," Conroy said in the announcement.
Conroy couldn't resist a political dig in the announcement, describing the project as "the final failed broadband plan produced by the former Coalition Government". The Howard Government signed off on the $958 million scheme in June last year, effectively positioning as the alternative to Labor's plans for national broadband.
The cancelled contract will cost Elders a projected $15 million, while Optus has spent $7 million in operating expenses and $9 million in capital expenses as part of the project. In terse statements to the ASX, both companies maintained that they had met the terms of the contract, but did not suggest any immediate plans to appeal the decision.
The much-vaunted NBN plan is supposed to provide coverage to 98% of the Australian population. For the unfortunate other 400,000 or so individuals, the Australian Broadband Guarantee scheme will continue, though it has not been funded past 2009.
Conroy predicted last week that completion of the NBN would take at least five years. Other projects such as Internode's regional WiMAX rollout are also proceeding, but for people outside the regular ADSL footprint, the immediate future isn't looking much brighter.