[AusNOG] Backhaul providers lobby against NBN POI proposal

[Kris Price]

On 12/11/2010 3:20 p.m., Kai wrote:
> Comments, anyone?
>
> Backhaul providers lobby against NBN POI proposal
> http://itnews.com.au/News/238290,backhaul-providers-lobby-against-nbn-poi-proposal.aspx

How much of the Australian population live in areas already served by 
competing backhaul providers? I would've thought the majority of cities 
would be served, and therefore the majority of the population (but I'm 
not that familiar with the aussie broadband landscape).

So wouldn't it be more sensible to structure NBN Co into two entities:

1) The first (FTTH Co) is dedicated to just doing access within regions. 
It only provides connectivity between subscribers and providers. It 
explcitly does not compete with any backhaul providers or any other type 
of service provider. This is about providing the level playing field for 
broadband access, where the market fails, and where there will always be 
a monopoly. About 100-200 regional POIs seems perfectly reasonable for a 
country with the population and spread of Aus. Within these regions FTTH 
Co directly backhauls the MSANs to the region's POIs over DWDM into the 
aggregation switches where it's handed over to the service provider's 
router (either remotely or locally hosted), or interconnected to the 
various Backhaul Cos.

2) The second (Backhaul Co) is set up to establish competitive backhaul, 
primarily to regions that are poorly serviced at the moment, but 
naturally it would drop out along the way. Overtime demand produced by 
FTTH may mean other carriers deploy fibre to these areas. Eventually 
this entity could be sold off. Alternatively it might make more sense to 
provide funding to existing state owned infrastructure orgs (thinking of 
the electricity grids) to build out fibre to these areas that could be 
leased out to backhaul providers.

Surely we want to leave something for service providers and carriers to 
do. If NBN Co does everything including the backhaul it seems there's 
little opportunity for competition and real differentiation.

At least this way everything is transparent. There's no cross 
subsidising difficult to reach users from easy to reach users etc. (Yes, 
newsflash there are disadvantages to living in the boondocks.) If you 
want to be doing that it should be done in some more transparent way.