Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy today said trench digging to lay fibre cables for the National Broadband Network in Tasmania would begin in October.
The Tasmanian National Broadband Network Company has started work on constructing the Midway Point fibre link in the state.
The Federal Government and NBN Co ditched plans to establish a joint venture operation with Tasmanian state-owned utility, Aurora Energy, because it was delaying the construction of the state's fibre network.
NBN Tasmania Limited, the state's last mile fibre operator, has appointed long-time Telstra staffer Adrian Inch as its general manager.
The telecommunications industry is abuzz with speculation that the Tasmanian Government is planning to commence building its part of the National Broadband Network in April 2010 to coincide with the state election, with supplier tender documents to be issued this week.
Should Telstra be investing in a pre-emptive defence against the NBN? Or should it go slow and wait like everybody else?
Faced with a renewed threat in newly-appointed Tony Abbott and unknown-quantity communications portfolio ankle-biter Tony Smith, Stephen Conroy responded this week in the way any politician would: he gave lots, and lots, and lots of speeches.
Like the engineers that sat down on day one with an empty blackboard and a mission to get man to the moon and back, building the NBN from the ground up is a daunting and complex opportunity that will present more than its share of challenges.
I have seen the NBN, and it looks a lot like Christina Aguilera. Or, at least, it looked like her when I dropped into Ericsson's Melbourne headquarters recently to see a live demo of their NBN solutions. Yet behind the streaming TV, one question lingers -- and not even the government seems able to answer it.
Time will tell how the rest of the NBN Co board shapes up, but it's hard to dismiss the credentials of its two most high-profile appointments so far.
Get the full picture on the Tasmanian leg of the National Broadband Network in this wide-ranging video interview with TNBN Company chairman and ex-Telstra executive Doug Campbell.
The Rudd Government's decision to build its own broadband network significantly cranks up the threat to Telstra's dominance in the telecommunications sector.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but Australian utilities' recent abandonment of broadband over powerline (BPL) technology has all but sealed the fate of a technology that was once hoped to bring high-speed data to every corner of Australia.
This afternoon Communications Minister Stephen Conroy described his opposite, Senator Nick Minchin, as a Luddite as he took questions from reporters on the Opposition's attempt to block the government's wide-ranging telecommunications industry reform legislation, which includes provisions to force the break-up of Telstra.
Mike Quigley and Doug Campbell's long-standing relationships with Telstra and few of its rivals will lead Australia's telecommunications industry to question privately whether Telstra will receive a phenomenal level of access to the NBN decision-making processes.
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