Joint venture – public and private sector bodies both retain a stake in the network
Public Participation > 50%
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NBN Project (Australia) (40 min documentary)
Recently NBN offered au$11 billion to TELSTRA for their existing infrastucture thus creating a National monopoly which will deploy FTTH to 93% of homes. The government established the Commonwealth wholly-owned company, NBN Co Limited (NBN Co), to design to build and operate the new National Broadband Network. The government intends to sell down its interest in the company within five years after the network is built. The total public cost of its National Broadband Network is around 34 times the amount per head initially committed in Alberta, 12 times Singapore’s, and 7 times New Zealand’s while supplying broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps). -
UFB, New Zealand
established a single Crown-owned (or state-owned) corporation to invest in partnerships with up to 33 local fibre companies that will build, operate and sell wholesale access services over fibre networks. -
PBC (France)
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Fibre MANs (Ireland)
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Asturcón (Spain)
- Public Participation < 50%
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Midtsoenderjylland (Denmark)
[now operated with almost 100% FTTH access everywhere in our (rural) municipality and financed by two cooperative electricity companies owned by their customers. [per Simon Simonsen 9/5/11]] -
CityNet (Amsterdam)
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Extremadura (Telecable 51%, SOFIEX 49%)
In France Auvergne & France Telecom Orange signed three new public-private partnerships in 2009 for covering broadband “dead zones”.
In Morbihan, a 12 million euro investment to provide coverage for the last dead zones in this region and increase the speed for a large proportion of its ADSL households. Fourteen business districts and over 600 companies will have a fibre-optic connection with ultra-high-speed broadband.
The second agreement signed with the Gironde region and the Gironde Digital joint association aimed to provide all homes with broadband within fifteen months. The 53.4 million euro investment would eliminate dead zones and optimize regional infrastructures.
find out more about Gironde Digital
The partnership formed in December 2009 with Languedoc- Roussillon is the most significant one signed to date. Nearly 400,000 inhabitants across 555 districts will benefit from this scheme, which would bring broadband to 99.6% of the region within eighteen months.
Italy is currently one of the largest FTTH markets in Europe, with more than 2.5 million homes passed and 348,000 fibre subscribers at the end of December 2010.
Two important recent initiatives radically increase FTTH penetration: Fibre for Italy—a co-investment partnership among Fastweb, Vodafone, and Wind—and Telecom Italia’s plan. The Fibre for Italy project is aimed at reaching 20 million people in Italy’s 15 largest cities by 2015, and a pilot including 7,000 households has been launched in Rome. Telecom Italia is planning to connect 138 cities with FTTH/B by 2018. Furthermore, seven Italian telecommunications operators (including Telecom Italia) are also slated to partner up to create a national open access FTTH network in areas where no operator has yet scheduled fibre roll-out.
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Are you a public sector or private sector partner or a broadband beneficiary as a result of this model? What do you believe have been the advantages (or disadvantages) of this approach to funding high speed broadband investment?
News just in from Australia – highlights the influence and difficulties of labour costs in rolling out broadband fiber – determining the finance model adoption – or does it? How much does it influence your decisions on which model to adopt?
“NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley has said that recent natural disasters could spark a labour shortage that would could make it difficult for the company to stay within its $35.9 billion budget to build the National Broadband Network (NBN), according to a report by the Australian Financial Review.
Flooding in Queensland earlier this year is expected to cause a shortage of construction workers on infrastructure projects, which could raises costs for the NBN, and other infrastructure projects, Mr Quigley reportedly said.
The NBN Co is in the midst of negotiating construction contracts after a failed bid to award contracts by tender, and Mr Quigley said the NBN Co may seek to establish contracts that would introduce cost certainty on labour costs so as to avoid unexpected cost spikes.
Mr Quigley reiterated his confidence that the company will be able to secure a construction partner to build the broadband network.” source
Business Spectator 6th May
Broadening access The recent experience in Malaysia
via Broadening access.
I would like to tell you about an iniciative of the Basque Government that began five years ago. This action has succeed in extending the broadband services to almost the 100% of the Basque Country. It was focus in all those areas where telco operators don’t provide these services (white areas) using a wireless solution (finally WiMAX).
Basque Government used a public tender requesting for the deployment of a network that would provide broadband services in those areas. The Goverment facilitated the radiocomunications sites of its own and the transport network (if the operator considered it useful). All the network belonged to the Goverment but the company awarded managed and operated the access network providing the services to the end-users for a four year term.
Nowadays, Basque Government has initiated a new proccess to define a new strategy that will extend NGA networks to the whole territory.
Due to the current private investment limitation, the Government is considering a PPP alternative that could involve several operator/utilities/administration infrastructure and permit the deployment of fiber accesses to all those villages that in other situation would risk to be excluded by the market. Later, each telco operator would decide and invest in the access network that considers more appropriate in each case.
This action is still in a study stage as part of the plan and its feasability is being analysed.
While bottom-up, public and private DBO are great options to stimulate development – particularly on a local / regional solution – a full JV between Public and Private partners is the best way to stimulate long term beneficial outcomes for consumers. Why? Because Public Sector input can retain pressure to develop infrastructure for the benefit of the citizens, while also providing access to long term funding strategies – while Private Sector input will help commercialise the solution and give access to new leading edge technologies. Similarly a “private only” solution leads to “shareholder” not “customer” oriented solutions and a “public only” solution can often be out of date and slow to influence change. Joint Ventures seem to be the way to go in my opinion – so what stops them working – and why don’t we see more examples of Public Private Partnerships working on infrastructure across Europe????