SingTel Optus chief executive officer, Chris Anderson, told attendees at a Telco Leaders Lecture Series last night there was little that could be done with the new standard that could not be achieved through GPRS or 2.5G.
Speaking after the lecture, Anderson hosed down a prediction made in a Fitch Ratings report that Hutchison's launch of the network would heighten levels of competition in Australia's telecommunications industry, stating "I doubt there will be a lot of price pressure".
He said the soon-to-be-launched network would lack the ubiquity of the SingTel Optus network and dismissed the idea that Hutchison would deliver deep discounts to users in an attempt to lure customers from existing mobile suppliers.
"The last thing they want to be doing is slashing prices," he said.
Hutchison is expected to launch its network sometime in the second quarter of this year, as parent Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa adheres to its schedule of launching networks firstly in Europe and its home market. It plans to deploy its Australian network around Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.
Optus, along with rival telco heavyweights Telstra and Vodafone, is keeping a wary eye on Hutchison's launch, with each carrier preparing plans to avoid being caught short should the business take off.
The Singaporean-owned company has withheld comment on a launch date for its own 3G network and claims it doesn't plan to launch such a service until it perceives a market need. A spokesperson emphasised, however, the carrier was "ready to jump" when demand was sufficient to warrant a launch.
In his lecture, Anderson also savaged the present structure of the contributions SingTel Optus has to make to delivery of telecommunications services to rural and remote areas in the bush under the Universal Service Obligation (USO).
He described them as almost "obscene and breathtaking" and described the USO system has having "not one iota of sense".
"We subsidise Telstra in the bush," he said.
Optus pay a proportion of their profits to Telstra under the terms of the USO to assist them in rolling out services to customers in rural and remote Australia. Anderson claimed Optus wanted to compete in the rural and remote market, but the present structure of the USO stripped away its incentive.
He said that instead of paying Telstra a proportion of their profits under the agreement, they should be allowed to make a "payment in kind" by rolling out services into rural areas through the use of technologies such as satellite.
Anderson also told the audience that the managed services and broadband markets are where he expects the company's growth to come from. He added that perseverance with e-commerce is vital, despite the damage done to the area by the dot-com bust.
That bust, he added, was outweighed by the damage done to the telecommunications industry by the global downturn. Over a trillion dollars are owed by telecommunications companies to their banks, he said, describing such figures as "...enormously frightening metrics". However, the industry was now back on an upswing, he added.
Anderson added that Optus was considering buying DSL capacity from Telstra and re-packaging it with Optus branding and value added services, but still needed to work out acceptable pricing with the telecommunications heavyweight.
He said that Optus will deliver managed services by partnering with established companies, such as HP-Compaq, IBM, CSC and others.
