John Linton .......and I means weeks/months - not years/decades.
Since the sound bite policy of building an "NBN" was first mooted I have been saying that a fast HSPA service would be easier, far cheaper and far quicker to implement than any of the crazy options currently being considered. As this article clearly illustrates:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123612370867623587.html
providing fibre to rural areas is always going to cost far more than anyone ever thinks it will. I understand that only Telstra has made a serious commitment to actually dimensioning their HSPA service well enough at this time I am assuming that Optus/Vodafone will eventually get around to fixing their 'careful' deployment attitudes as they both did on their voice mobile network - for those of us old enough to remember the early phases of Optus and Vodafone mobile networks.
Over the past few months several of Exetel's country agents have been installing HSPA services on rural properties using Yagi antennae to address the distance from base station issues (up to 30 kilometers in several cases) with considerable success. The current drawbacks are the cost of the antennae and the lack of a full functionality 'magic box' that has a sim slot (rather than a USB port) and a built in ATA with two lines to take the customers current telephone hand set.
Exetel has been trying to source a suitable Yagi from the PRC over the past two months to reduce the antenna price from something over $A130.00 to something under $A50.00 (including the patch leads) and also sourcing the 'magic' box for something like $A150.00 to give a one off install hardware cost of sub $200.00 plus whatever an agent wanted to add as a hardware margin plus whatever the agent wanted to add for installation. In this way the end user gets a much lower cost installation than they would be able to get from any other carrier/agent but the agent will be able to make more money because Exetel has 'procured' much lower cost hardware.
This concept would allow some 700 'rural' agents (no we don't have that many at the moment - less than 10% of that number) to provide something in excess of a 1.5 mbps broadband service (at the moment) to between 20,000 and 50,000 rural users whose only options currently are dial up or satellite at less cost than a satellite service with much higher speeds. As the HSPA speeds increase over the next 12 to 18 months a rural HSPA user may well be able to get speeds of up to 8 mbps on a 14.4 HSPA service and at prices well below Telstra's current 8 mbps ADSL1 services.
By also being able to use VoIP the customer's call costs can be greatly reduced and the ability of being able to send and receive SMS and FAX from the 'magic box' will be another cost saving and operational bonus. By using VoIP's 10 cent per national call the customer can afford to keep the wire line for emergencies. A 'bundled' mobile service could be included but only as an option. The mobile service would have very low cost per second calls.
If we are successful in procuring the required hardware at our target prices and/or can convince an HSPA carrier to subsidise the hardware on a 24 month HSPA contract then it will be a compelling 'all in one' communications solution that far surpasses everything else that is currently available or, as far as I know, currently being 'planned' for rural users. An all in one VoIP, Broadband, SMS, FAX solution for less than $40.00 a month is goingto be very attractive for anyone within 25 - 30 kms of a mobile base station.
We need to rapidly build up our country/especially rural agent base which we have plans to do over the next two months to ensure we can offer the service Australia wide. We will put together a 'service package' supported by sensible advertising that will provide significant activation margins for the rural agent (hardware at the indicated prices and perhaps a carrier subsidy on that hardware for a 24 month contract) plus a low enough cost 2, 5 and 10 gb plan to allow the agent to add a 'monthly support charge' to give a very real financial incentive without impairing the customer's value for money.
If we are successful in pulling these many threads together we have a realistic chance of providing some 20,000+ rural users with broadband services long before the end of the first Telstra court case let alone the first "spade turning the first sod". The bundle would be:
"Magic Box", Yagi Antenna, Sim - $A250.00 delivered to agent
Agents margin on the hardware - $75.00
Agents install costs - around $150.00
2gb HSPA at $32.50 (agent's margin = $10.00)
VoIP calls at 10 cents per call
Faxes at 3 cents per fax
SMS at 5 cents per message
[maybe bundled mobile telephone plan at very low per call rates]
'Local' agent support
All we need to do now is to convince another 649 rural agents of the benefits of participating in this promotion and becoming an Exetel agent.