Politics,policy and fixed-line telecommunications provision: Insights from Australia

Over the past 40 years, telecommunications policy worldwide has been dominated by the privatisation of former government-owned firms, the pursuit of increasing competition as well as the delegation of day-to-day operations of industry decision-making and oversight from core governments to autonomous regulators sitting at arms-length from political decision-making. One of the most (apparently) dramatic reversals of this trend has occurred in Australia where the federal government has set up a state-owned company (NBN Co) to fully replace and upgrade the fixed-line infrastructure for voice and broadband communications for the entire country. Some argued that the NBN heralded a reversal of a “failed, neoliberal” deregulation and pro-competition policy agenda in Australia, and a return to “social democratic” values. The NBN has attracted interest as a possible model for other governments looking to fund broadband infrastructure.The NBN Co's network is nearing completion. It has proved disappointing in many ways, with costs escalations, missed deadlines and a downscaling of the original full-fibre footprint to a mixed technology model (MTM). It has also proved politically divisive, with some claiming the MTM changes represent the reassertion of a neoliberal political agenda. In this paper, we trace the evolution of the fixed-line telecommunications industry in Australia from the 1980s to the present along the dimensions of privatisation, deregulation and competition in voice, broadband and policy settings. We find that contrary to popular political rhetoric, the Australian industry reforms have been characterised by only a partial and inconsistent progression towards the international policy objectives. In particular, ongoing government ownership of the incumbent created perverse incentives for both regulatory and industry actors and ensured political involvement in import network investment and operations decisions which in other jurisdictions are delegated to private-sector owners and regulators at arms-length from political influence. We contend that the NBN was not a social democratic response to failed neoliberal policies, nor was the MTM a neoliberal reassertion. Rather, the politicisation of the NBN is a function of the inability to decentralise ownership and control of the industry away from the government. These issues will continue to dominate the Australian debate, as the statutory context requires the privatisation of the NBN within five years of its projected 2021 completion. Extreme caution is warranted for jurisdictions looking to the NBN model for guidance.     

Rollout and regulation of Fibre-To-The-Premises networks. Insights from the Spanish case

In 2017, the coverage of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure reached 71% of households in Spain, surpassing most of the other Member States of the European Union (EU) and only outweighed by Portugal, Latvia and Lithuania. This article analyses the factors that have contributed to the deployment of these fibre networks by both the incumbent and the alternative operators that previously relied on the Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) of copper cables. An investment-friendly regulatory framework, which did not mandate access to the optical loops, and a telecommunications market comprised of dissimilar actors in the fixed and mobile segments, have been key to the deployment of FTTP networks in Spain. Additionally, based on historical coverage data, we test retrospectively, the sensitivity of geographic market segmentation to the time of the analysis and criteria for potential NGA competition. As per the analysis, the unregulated area where facility-based competition may be expected range between 23% and 61% of the premises upon the case. We discuss the implications of having mandated a Virtual Unbundled Local Access (VULA) to New Generation Access (NGA) infrastructure in 2013, examining the most likely operators' strategies. We conclude that, in the Spanish market, an earlier regulation would have reinforced inter-platform NGA competition at the expense of more limited coverage. The analysis can provide policy-makers with useful insights about the trade-off between coverage and infrastructure competition.     

Take your partners: Public private interplay in Australian and New Zealand plans for next generation broadband

Within a few days of each other in early 2009, the national governments of Australia and New Zealand announced separate plans to invest heavily in advanced broadband networks. Taxpayers in each country will contribute at least half the estimated cost of fibre-to-the-premises networks reaching the overwhelming majority of households and businesses within 8–10 years. These complex and controversial forms of ‘public private interplay’ demonstrate three trends: a shift away from the liberalization and privatization policy consensus of the last two decades; shared convictions about the anticipated size of fast broadband’s economic and social benefits, and about the need for wholesale-only fixed line network operation to maximize those benefits; and the unlikely impact of the global financial and economic crisis in stimulating investment in particular infrastructures seen as critical to the national economies that emerge from it. This article discusses industry structures and regulation in Australia and New Zealand, their long history of public investment in telecommunications and the recent popularity of public private partnerships (PPPs) with Australian state governments. It outlines the ambitious broadband plans and surveys their prospects. Like so many other policy actions following the global economic crisis, these are distinctively national responses to internationally shared challenges.