'Beaten Telstra's court bid is sour grapes': Coonan
Communications Minister Helen Coonan has hit back at Telstra, accusing the telco of sour grapes, after it announced it had filed suit against her over its failed bid for some AU$1 billion of WiMax funding.
In a statement, Coonan said the telco had been beaten "fair and square" to the funding, which the government awarded to OPEL, a joint venture between Optus and Elders, to build a WiMax network covering the bush.
"This is just a case of an ordinary bid being blown out of the water by an outstanding bid -- and the loser not happy with the umpire's decision. I completely reject the assertions made by Telstra. The process was fair and consistent with both the guidelines, assessment plan and probity requirements," she said.
The minister added that OPEL had beaten Telstra's bid with a superior proposition, which will cover around twice the underserved premises than the 250,000 homes the incumbent's scheme would have included.
Telstra returned fire, accusing the Minister and OPEL of obfuscating the details of the bid.
"The truth of the matter is if the OPEL plan was so good why haven't they or the Minister released the full details of it? They have dribbled it out in electorate-based media releases and put maps up on a Web site, but there is no summary of the OPEL plan anywhere so that it can be properly assessed -- not on the government's Web site and not on the OPEL Web site. If it's such a superior bid then release it for everyone to see -- they can't because they are still trying to make it work," a spokesperson said.
Telstra announced on Friday its decision to take the Minister to court after, it claimed, she refused the telco access to documents on how the government reached its decision on the winning bidder. The first hearing in the case is expected early this week.
Coonan said she first heard about the case through a media release put out by Telstra and said the company would be better served spending time boosting its Next G network. The telco plans to shut down its CDMA network in January and has promised Next G will provide equal or better coverage by that date.
"Quite frankly, I would be much happier if Telstra put this sort of effort into rectifying the rising level of consumer concerns with the rollout of their new Next G network. I have just spent the last six weeks on the road across Australia and based on the level of frustration I heard from people regarding their mobile coverage, this is the issue that needs Telstra's urgent and genuine attention," the Minister said.
The government have repeatedly clashed over the CDMA switch-off, with the Communications Minister threatening to force Telstra to keep the network open beyond the planned January closure.