Australia's Liberal Party has unveiled its broadband policy to replace Labor's National Broadband Network plan. If the Liberals win the upcoming election, they will cancel Labor's National Broadband Network plan to be replaced by their own plan. By 2016 Australia will achieve a national broadband baseline, under which 97 percent of premises are able to be served by high-speed networks capable of delivering from 100 Mbps down to a minimum of 12 Mbps peak speed, using a combination of technologies including HFC, DSL, and fixed wireless, according to the Liberals' policy. There will also be improved satellite delivered broadband services for the last 3 percent. Central to the plan is a AUD 2.75 billion investment (with the expectation of leveraging at least AUD 750 million in additional private sector funding) to create a nation-wide competitive fibre optic ‘backbone’ by 2017. This will ensure two lanes of ‘backhaul’ fibre each accessible to any telecommunications company to provide multi-technology broadband. In addition the Liberals will legislate to allow the ACCC to set access pricing to support broadband competition.
The plan will identify the areas where Australians are underserved and ‘fill those gaps’ as quickly as possible by committing: AUD 750 million for fixed broadband optimisation to significantly increase the number of households which can receive a DSL service or high speed equivalent; up to AUD 1 billion in grant funding for new fixed wireless networks in rural and remote Australia; up to AUD 1 billion in investment funding for new fixed wireless networks in metropolitan Australia, with an emphasis on outer metropolitan areas. The Liberals will also provide grant funding of AUD 700 million to support the provision of improved satellite delivered broadband services to the last 3 percent of the population. All networks funded under the plan will be open access networks. Access prices will be set under the telecommunications access regime administered by the ACCC. The Coalition government will establish a National Broadband Commission (NBC) to implement its broadband plan. The NBC will build and publish a detailed National Broadband Database.
