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OPEL "Considering Its Options" |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Wednesday, 02 April 2008 |
Optus
has struck back at the Federal Government with a strongly worded public
statement which suggests that the decision to terminate its contract to
build a rural broadband network may be as suspect as the decision to
award it in the first place.
While the
number two carrier and its joint venture partner again stopped short of
threatening legal action over the decision to withdraw the Broadband
Connect funding, Optus Chief Executive PaulO'Sullivan said the decision is based on flawed data.
"In our view, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the
Digital Economy has now made a flawed recommendation to the Minister -
reflecting serious errors in its database of ‘underserved premises' which led it to underestimate the number of underserved premises which would benefit.
"We believe the Department's process was flawed: information was not
provided to OPEL in accordance with its contract, and there was little
dialogue with OPEL after it lodged the
Implementation Plan in early January," he said in the statement.
"OPEL stands ready to deliver the contract and deliver
new broadband services," he went on concluding that "Optus is
considering all of its options, in consultation with its fellow OPEL
shareholder Elders".
O'Sullivan also said the 'incumbent monopolist', Telsra has been
"generously protected" by the decision and that the turn around will
have implications "for confidence in future competitive
selection processes conducted by this Government."
In
a damning allegation that seems to indicate the Government and
Department were determined to ensure the failure of the
contractO'Sullivan also claimed that: "Three successive written
requests from OPEL to meet with the Departmental Secretary were
ignored".
He
also claims that in contrast to the Government's claim that the
implementation plan would not achieve the coverage areas required under
the contract, OPEL's bid was assessed as serving 526,474underserved
premises.
The actual implementation plan delivered in January this year
demonstrated the proposed network would meet the coverage requirements
in the contract and in fact deliver broadband coverage to almost
900,000underserved households in rural and remote Australia, 70 per cent more than the Department had assessed.
Optus
remains confident in its claim and has again invited the Government to
engage an independent audit of the coverage database against the
Department's coverage database.
"We believe
this would confirm that our claimed coverage accurately reflects the
definitions in the Department's Guidelines issued in September 2006,
and delivers within the agreed 90 per cent tolerance levels upon the coverage we committed to provide in our winning bid," he said.
He also confirmed that without the proposed funding the new network would not be built.
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