Australia - Telco executives have called for NBN based on a public private partnership

[the australian] A GROUP of telecommunications executives yesterday made an 11th-hour plea to independent MPs over the National Broadband Network.

They asked the independents to weigh the benefits of Labor's $43-billion NBN plan carefully.

The Alliance for Affordable Broadband, comprising seven veteran telco executives, urged the independents to demand a stringently costed public-private NBN model over Labor's "more costly and more risky" rollout.

The AAB offered an alternative national broadband plan, which it has called NBN 3.0, a play on the name Labor gave its fibre-centric plan NBN 2.0.

The AAB wants the next government to mimic the Obama administration and build a massive 4G wholesale-only access network covering 98 per cent of the population at a cost of about $3bn.

It also endorses the use of fibre-optics, but insists it should be used only for competitive backhaul or connections to premises where there was "a demonstrated and justifiable improvement in productivity and/or social equality to justify taxpayer contribution".

The policy bears strong similarities to Tony Abbott's broadband plan in its market-driven approach and challenges the economics of Labor's plan to build fibre to 98 per cent of premises.

Its key spokesman, Pipe Networks founder Bevan Slattery, was also a vocal critic of NBN Co chief Mike Quigley's Charles Todd memorial oration delivered on the eve of the election.

Mr Slattery rejected suggestions the group was partisan.

"I wouldn't go so far as that. The Coalition policy contains some good principles, but there are some areas that could turn a bit," Mr Slattery said.

The alliance was particularly concerned that the Coalition may use the digital-dividend spectrum to repeat the Howard government's Opel wireless plan. That saw Optus-Elders (known as Opel) win a $958 million tender to build a WiMax network in regional areas. It was dumped by Labor after the 2007 election. "I think it would be a terrible outcome of all this if one single retail provider got the vast majority of that spectrum, or even more so, if it was split up between the existing retail providers and there was no wholesale wireless access," Mr Slattery said.

AAPT chief Paul Broad, another AAB member, said there still would be a need for fibre. "We are still going to need a lot of fibre in the ground. There is no argument against that. But you don't need fibre to every home out there."

The AAB was endorsing neither a fibre-to-the-home nor a fibre-to-the-node network. Rather, Mr Slattery said, the government needed to do a much more thorough analysis to determine the optimum level of fibre deployment for social, economic and commercial return than under the current Labor plan.

"What we're saying is that there is a number between 0 and 90 (per cent) where that makes sense," Mr Slattery said.

Business leaders call for public-private broadband model