analysis Regardless of whether Telstra, Terria or anybody else wins the $4.7 billion national broadband network contract, network hardware suppliers are going to cash in to the tune of billions. We take you through the list of the most likely suspects to win the work.
Terria recently put out requests for "construction and telecommunication vendors with experience in equipment supply, civil construction, project management, installation or maintenance" for the national broadband network (NBN). ZDNet.com.au called around to find out who responded.
| Company | Interested in Terria work? | |
|---|---|---|
| Alcatel-Lucent | No Comment | |
| Cisco | Yes | |
| Ericsson | No comment | |
| Fujitsu | No comment on anything to do with NBN | |
| Huawei | Yes, interested | |
| Nortel | "Obviously interested in talking to anyone involved" | |
| RAD Australia | Spokesperson unavailable | |
| Tellabs | Couldn't confirm or deny. The spokesperson said, however, that the nature of the company meant it was into "everything involved in the NBN". |
Terria chairman, Michael Egan, did not respond to requests for comment.
Ovum analyst David Kennedy said that most of the money going out to suppliers, around 80 per cent, would be on the access portion of the network, for which he considered the strongest competitors to be Alcatel-Lucent, Chinese vendor Huawei and Ericsson.
He said of those, Huawei was the disruptor due to its introduction of lower pricing into the market.
The rest of the money would go to those companies building the aggregation networks and completing construction work.
Guy Cranswick, IBRS analyst, said alliances with such operators would be decided on the strength of their relationship with the incumbent, Telstra. "The partner(s) will have to work with the incumbent and in a sense a default decision-making process is likely to ensure that the status quo is not disturbed too greatly," he said.
This would seem to point to Alcatel-Lucent or Ericsson, which have fostered a strong relationship with Telstra over the years.
In fact, Alcatel-Lucent was chosen for Telstra's ditched 2005 NBN plan. Neither Telstra nor Alcatel-Lucent would comment on current industry speculation that the network specialist had already been chosen to facilitate Telstra's roll-out for the government's NBN and that the agreement precluded it from signing on with other bids.
Ericsson played a role in Telstra's Next G roll out. The network vendor was also unwilling to comment on its possible involvement in the Telstra bid.
Suppliers will also have been approached by Acacia. However, the group has been keeping its cards close to its chest.
Telstra's ditched NBN plan from 2005?
So really if it hadn't have been for the ACCC sticking their noses in to protect us all, and scaring Telstra off, we would now have a Telstra fftn network in the cities and as a consequence, an OPEL WiMAX network in rural areas. All completed, or as good as.
This would have given us two completely different networks, run by two competing companies, who in turn may have then invested more into each others areas, creating increased competition and better prices. This sounds great, doesn't it?
But instead, It's now almost 2009 and we continue to wait and will wait for many more years to come, even if the NBN was anounced right now.
Let's face it, Telstra may not have invested in 2005, but in all likelyhood, will get the nod plus almost $5 billion tax payer funded bonus in 2009/10. For something we should already have, which only would have cost the tax payer the $1 billion OPEL subsidy!
So regardless of pricing, Telstra hater or fanboi, let's all try to agree, what a pity we let bureaucrats impede our advancement.
Thanks ACCC.