For the international readers here, an Australian federal election is coming up either later this year or in early 2008. The two candidates for Prime Minister are the incumbent John Howard of the Liberal Party, and Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party.
Rudd has been newly positioned as the federal Labor leader, and I’ve been watching carefully to see what he can do. The election this year will be my first vote, so I’d better make it a good one.
So, today’s reason to vote Labor is the announcement of their intention to build a country wide broadband network. It would be funded partly by the government, partly by the Future Fund established at the sale of Telstra, and the rest made up by private funds. The network would also be open to use by other ISPs, apparently.
Great news from this point of view. I’ve been watching Telstra’s many anti-competitive scuffles with the ACCC over the last year or two, including the plan of launching their own FTTN service with one condition – that they are allowed to deny competitors access to it. Obviously that condition wasn’t available to them.
If Labor wins and goes ahead with this, it’ll mean fast, accessible, non-Telstra broadband to everyone. ISPs will no longer be limited to what Telstra allows them, and there will be more healthy competition. Telstra imposed costs that are currently passed on would be done away with, and Telstra will be left sulking in the corner (maybe).
They get my vote on this. Now to digest all the other issues…
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