82/07
Tuesday 19th June 2007
Wireless is great for the bush – just ask Labor
The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan said today that Stephen Conroy needed to come clean about exactly how the Labor Party planned to deliver broadband to 98 per cent of Australia through a fibre to the node network.
“Senator Conroy doesn’t know whether he is coming or going. Last year he said that a mix of technologies were necessary to service the needs of all Australians, now he is saying that fibre to the node is the only solution.
“Labor claims to have a broadband plan for 98 per cent of Australians but based on any reasonable assessment, their numbers just don’t add up and coverage will only reach around 75 per cent of Australians.
Yesterday, Senator Conroy described wireless as a “second-class outcome” but on his own website www.senatorconroy.com.au, he contradicts himself with the transcript of his speech to the Connecting Up Conference in 2005:
“With access to a wireless broadband virtual private network, a farmer could design a farm that is completely ‘connected up’ and allows him to monitor his property and control his machinery from the comfort of his home.
“However, these possibilities can only be realised if rural and regional communities have access to the infrastructure used to deliver these services.
“The most important infrastructure in this regard is the infrastructure that allows the delivery of broadband, optical fibre, DSLAMs and wireless base stations.
“Unfortunately, this infrastructure is not currently widely available in rural and regional Australia.”
Senator Coonan said the Labor Party’s broadband proposal provided no solution for rural and regional Australia whatsoever.
“The Labor Party cannot have it both ways. They cannot describe wireless broadband as a ‘second class outcome’ but then provide no evidence of how they propose to deliver fibre to the node to 98 per cent of the country.
“They have not provided one costing nor one map to support their fraudband broadband proposal.”
“I issued a clear challenge to Mr Rudd and the Labor Party earlier today to provide all the costings, maps and technical information about their broadband proposal for the full scrutiny of the Australian public,” Senator Coonan said.
“I will keep this challenge going until the Labor Party come clean and show us how and where they plan to rollout their network idea.
“And while they scrap around and try to do the numbers, I will start the delivery of new, state of the art, high speed broadband network and the switch on will start immediately.
“What the Coalition Government has very clearly said is that we will provide broadband coverage to 100 per cent of the population. The rollout of a new, independent, competitive and state of the art national broadband network – the OPEL network – will extend high speed services out to 99 per cent of the population and provide speeds of 12 megabits per second by mid 2009. The remaining 1 per cent of consumers will be served via a $2750 satellite subsidy.”
Australia Connected will provide fourth generation wireless technology through WiMAX, a technology that provides high-speed broadband connections over distances of up 20 to 50 kilometres1.
WiMAX works by transmitting data wirelessly between a base-station and a receiver. WiMAX networks are already operating providing broadband speeds of up 10 megabits per second (Mbps), with scalability to increase to speeds up to 70Mbps in future years through a demonstrated technology evolution path.
Senator Coonan said WiMAX technology will deliver all the usual business communications needed by Australian consumers.
“This includes broadband Internet, VOIP, multiplayer interactive gaming, streaming media, web surfing, video and teleconferencing, instant messaging and media content downloads.
“WiMAX has been designed and developed to provide business grade quality of service (QOS), ensuring that the range of applications identified above are delivered at a consistently high quality.
“WiMAX is currently being deployed or rollouts being planned in countries such as Canada, the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
“The Coalition Government is delivering the best mix of technologies to ensure the best broadband services for all Australians regardless of where they live,” Senator Coonan said.
Ends
1 WiMAX short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access.