THE Tasmanian Government expects to begin negotiations within weeks on commercialising the Basslink fibre-optic cable, and plans to announce a partner by the end of the year. The Government is evaluating proposals from four telecommunications industry outfits, but telecommunications infrastructure project steering committee chair Rob Nicholl said a decision would depend on the negotiations. We won't get to the end of this evaluation and say company X has been awarded the capacity, Mr Nicholl said.
The next stage would be negotiations with them because they've put some proposals to us, and the proposals are all quite different. Before the end of the year we expect to have someone signed up and getting the cable activated. Mr Nicholl confirmed that the Tasmanian Government was collaborating in the search for a commercial partner with National Grid, owner of the undersea electric cable that the fibre-optic piggybacks on.
However, he said, there was no conflict between National Grid's commercially driven objectives and the Tasmanian Government's policy driven ones. At the end of the day we'll come to a joint agreement about which of the proposals offers the best value for National Grid's objectives vis a vis the policy objectives of the state, he said. There's no conflict.
You would think a policy objective of getting the greatest use of the network would also provide the greatest commercial returns. It's all about getting more traffic over National Grid's infrastructure. The more it's used, the better off it is commercially.
The federal Government's recent decision to award the Australia Connected rural broadband initiative to the Opel consortium has helped bring perspective to the evaluation process. With the Commonwealth announcement of Australia Connected this has certainly helped to make the proposals and our process clearer, Mr Nicholl said. We now know who's going to get the $900 million in commonwealth monies.
The Tasmanian Government recently accused the federal Government of taking control of the Basslink fibre-optic project as part of its Australia Connected announcement. A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Senator Helen Coonan responded that the federal Government only indicated that Opel was interested in joining the negotiations, and the consortium had also committed to building an entirely new Bass Strait connection by the end of 2009. THE Tasmanian Government expects to begin negotiations within weeks on commercialising the Basslink fibre-optic cable, and plans to announce a partner by the end of the year.
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