NBN Co and the competition watchdog will consult the telecommunications industry for two weeks on a controversial engineering recommendation aimed at making broadband services available in rural areas at the same price as in capital cities.
NBN Co last week told the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that flat pricing could be achieved by severely restricting connection points to the network it is building.
The NBN's proposal would see it laying fibre across areas where fibre already existed, stranding millions of dollars worth of investments and increasing construction costs.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy will decide in coming months whether to accept the recommendation from government-owned NBN Co to build just 14 points of interconnect into its network. That compares with about 5000 points at which carriers can connect to the copper telephone network.
These points are the juncture at which retail carriers can plug into NBN's network and take carriage of their customers' data.
Many companies, such as Optus, AAPT and TPG, have built extensive networks of broadband pipes capable of carrying the data of thousands of customers between exchanges to avoid paying Telstra to carry the data.
A spokeswoman for the minister yesterday confirmed that he was more likely to take the option of cross-subsidising regional areas than adopting NBN's recommendation. In September the Labor government promised independent MPs supporting it that broadband services would cost the same across the country.
Optus's general manager of interconnect and economic regulation, Andrew Sheridan, told BusinessDay: "It is pretty concerning. We have got some deep reservations about the NBN's proposal."
Optus owns broadband pipes to about 350 exchanges in Australia. Connecting to customers at an exchange in the capital city would make this infrastructure redundant.
"This 14-point model puts at risk a significant amount of existing infrastructure investment by a range of carriers, so there are some relevant questions to be asked about that investment," Mr Sheridan said, but would not comment on whether Optus would seek compensation.
