WA councils seek $10m annual telco panel

The Western Australian Local Government Association, a group representing almost 150 Western Australian councils, is renewing its supplier panel for telecommunications services, worth just under $10 million a year.

(Map, Western Australia image by
Trevor Sampson, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The contract, including the provision of fixed calls and internet as well as mobile calls and data, used to be a sole supply arrangement. However, it changed to a panel arrangement in January 2006, then moved back to having an incumbent sole supplier in December 2008. These arrangements dealt with the councils' communications needs over the last decade, and the councils hope now to create a new agreement to focus on the next 10 years worth of growth.

Both a sole provider and a panel of providers are possible, the group said in tender documents.

Local government in the state is about to be significantly reformed, the documents said, with the reforms set to require a greater demand for bandwidth and connectivity for shared services.

The $9.35 million annual spend has previously been broken down into just under $5 million for voice services, $2.8 million for mobile and $1.6 million for data services. Although the regional councils are smaller in number, they comprise almost half of the spend.

The group wanted regional council connectivity to be a key point and stated that there must be untimed local call rates between the local governments' fixed line and mobile services.

Currently, the council is provided with 7300 GSM services making 4.22 million calls a year, with an average spend of $28 per mobile per month. The fleet comprises of BlackBerrys, iPhones and other devices. The council expected it would require around 118GB per month of mobile data. Services provided for mobile data and internet had to be IPv6 ready.

Tele- and video-conferencing were expected to be included, as well as fleet management.