There's still life in the country's copper network says David Thodey, head of Australia's biggest telco, Telstra.
Speculation continues to rise about the future of the National Broadband Network fibre-to-the-home roll out if there is a change of government later this year - as reported in The Australia Thursday 20 June 2013.
Copper network will last another 100 years, says David Thodey
THE Coalition's plan to roll out a national broadband network using Telstra's copper network has received a significant boost as the telco giant's boss declared the ancient copper asset could run for another 100 years.
Speaking to journalist after a Trans-Tasman Business lunch in Sydney today, David Thodey said that the state of Telstra's copper network was in good working order and would remain so for generations to come.
"Copper has been going for 100 years, I think it will be going for another 100," he said.
"There is always opportunity so you have to keep things maintained. But it's perfectly ok, there is some copper a lot older than others but copper does not decompose."
Under Labor's flagship NBN project, $37.4 billion is being spent to build a state-of-the-art fibre-to-the-premise network that will bypass Telstra's copper network to connect homes and business to fibre optic cable.
Labor has insisted that fibre optic cables need to be laid because it not only provides superior download and upload speeds, but because Telstra's 100-year-old copper network is in a state of disrepair and needs to be replaced.
But Mr Thodey's declaration will be viewed as a significant win for the Coalition in its battle to convince voters that it's cheaper to deploy - at a cost of $20.4bn - and slower-speeded broadband network can service consumers' ever-increasing hunger for fast broadband speeds and large download capacities.
However the bugbear of asbestos removal will continue to haunt Telstra under the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node plan, despite recent assurances from opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull that less asbestos will be disturbed under its plan.
"This issue is irrelevant with technology. Obviously under fibre to the premise we remediate more pits and ducts but it wouldn't change (under FTTN) because we always have to be improving and making sure we do everything we can to progress safety," Mr Thodey said.
His comments come as an asbestos taskforce meeting took place in Melbourne today. The taskforce was established by Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten to deal with recent revelations of asbestos mishandling by contractors carrying out work in preparation for the NBN. Breaches of the telco's asbestos handling methods in Penrith and Ballarat forced Telstra to suspend remediation work on its pits and pipes.
Yesterday Telstra released the findings of a three-week audit into how the telco's contractors mishandled the removal of asbestos and confirmed that some of its contractors were not properly trained. The telco said new stringent guidelines were being put in place.
Telstra said it would ensure all contractor and subcontractor staff complete mandatory training in asbestos management, warning its partners that they would be fired unless they adopted new, stringent procedures for the removal of dangerous asbestos fibres.
Mr Thodey today said Telstra would not incur any significant costs to comply with those new, self-imposed procedures but he said there would be slight cost increases to conduct more inspections for asbestos contaminated pits.
"There is some small costs in terms of more inspections because we want to make sure we get it right before we get our people back out there working on it, But in the bigger scheme no," he said.
When asked if Telstra's contractors and subcontractors would be paid more to comply with the new asbestos handling procedures, Mr Thodey said no.
"Not significantly, not at the moment. We haven't finished all the work yet but at the moment no," he said.
