UPDATED | Labor leader Kevin Rudd has announced that Labor would build an open access FTTN broadband network if elected, and would contribute $4.7bn to the private sector partnered project.

"Today Federal Labor has taken an historic decision to build a world class national broadband network", said Rudd. "We believe this is a critical step when it comes to Australia's long term economic future."

The funding would be made up of $2bn from the existing communications fund, and the rest from the Future Fund's 17% stake in Telstra. Responding to criticism for "raiding" the fund, Rudd likened it to switching an investment, saying it was "equity for equity" and "telecommunications for telecommunications".

Shadow finance minister Lindsay Tanner revealed that one of the key aims of the proposal was to avoid "a giant private monopoly effectively dominating telecommunications in this country and in particular, the core infrastructure", with the proposal promising open access to all ISPs.

Labor did not provide comprehensive details about the proposal, but claimed it would provide minimum broadband speeds of 12Mbit/s to 98% of Australians. "In practice, we would expect that substantially faster speeds would be delivered to a very large proportion of the Australian population", said Tanner.

Reactions to the proposal were mixed, with the federal government mainly criticising the funding model, while both Telstra and Optus seemed to think that the proposal was modelled on their ideas.

Links:

• ALP Policy Announcement  (ALP, 21 Mar 2007)