JB

Telstra was meant to build the NBN

A quick dump while the topic is at hand. This information seems to be getting censored out of the internet.

I wish I had pursued this.

Let me give you the TLDR of what I remember.

There was a leak of government documents. Some auctioned off furniture contained documentation that it shouldn’t, if I recall correctly.

The documents outlined a plan by the Australian Government to 1000IQ play Telstra into “cutting a deal” with the Government for rolling the NBN.

It’s hurting my brain to remember… It was something like:

It was something like that. Basically, Government tried to play Telstra into building the NBN for cheap and Telstra just said that they weren’t interested. The Govs play was to neg Telstra so this was expected, but what they didn’t expect was for Telstra to not come back to the table after declining.

I need to find info on this. It was so juicy.

It might have actually been this? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/28/seized-nbn-documents-have-parliamentary-privilege-committee

And I might be getting the furniture bit confused with this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-31/cabinet-files-reveal-inner-government-decisions/9168442

No that was it!

The documents reveal how desperate the then-Labor government was to have Telstra buy into the project on the government’s terms.

“Telstra will initially approach the government with a number of proposals which the government will need to politely but firmly resist,” one document reads.

“The strategy is … [for Telstra to] ultimately approach government to invest or use NBN Co’s network on the government’s terms.”

The Government is still the sole owner of NBN Co, which is classed as an asset for budget purposes.

But with cost blow-outs and delays the Government is now facing the prospect of having to write it into the budget, rather than persisting with privatisation.

The negotiating strategy shows the initial plans for NBN Co were very different.

“The government does not need to rush into negotiations with investors making early offers,” another document reads.

“The government should keep interested parties engaged through consultation, rather than negotiation.”

I was discussing the NBN rollout with a coworker recently and made an offhand comment that Telstra was supposed to build the NBN network, but they didn’t bite the Australian Governments attempt to trick them into doing so at a discount.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the overview that covered this event. It was huge news when a leak about it dropped, but the information must not have been distributed enough for it to become common knowledge.

I’m going to keep this post here so that I can reference it. Please keep in mind that this post is based on opinion pieces, so this is all (somewhat) anecdotal.

I’m still looking into this in my freetime however I don’t have much of that.

References