FED:NBN is viable, says Gillard=2

AAP General News (Australia)
12-20-2010
FED:NBN is viable, says Gillard=2

Building the network will take nine and a half years with a rollout peak of 5900 premises
a day during construction.

Ms Gillard said when parliament last sat the government released a summary of the business case.

She said since that time the government had received the Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission (ACCC) advice on the points of interconnect (POI) decision and that
was incorporated in the business case released today.

A POI is the location where traffic is exchanged between one network and another.

Ms Gillard said the government accepted that advice to adopt a semi-distributed model,
to use existing infrastructure and to have more point of interconnect to allow business
access to the NBN around the country.

"The ACCC has advised the government that with this model, the ACCC has the regulatory
powers it needs to ensure a uniform wholesale price should the market not deliver that,"

she said.

Ms Gillard said the ACCC had advised the government that it expected there would be
uniform retail prices.

She said the business case showed the impacts of the POI and other policy changes in
a revised rate of return of 7.04 per cent, a relatively minor variation.

"That is because with this semi-distributed model and the benefits of the ACCC advice,
we know that we will be in a position to have a uniform wholesale price with all of the
uptake in regional Australia that flows from the benefit of uniform wholesale pricing,"

she said.

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