Optus confirms signing interim contract with NBN
21 Jan 2012
Australia's number two telco Optus yesterday confirmed it had signed the wholesale services agreement with NBN after having negotiating with the broadband network for over the last 15 months.
The interim contract would guide how Australia's retail and wholesale onseller telcos would buy services from NBN Co over the next year, until is a long term deal is worked out and settled. Each telco enters into the same standardised agreement with NBN Co.
The contract has been under development for the past 15 months in consultation with the telecommunications industry, but the negotiations, it was feared, might come unstuck with a number of telcos not ready to sign a version of the contract until provisions were modified.
The timing of the breakdown in negotiations comes with the previous trial agreement, through which telcos had been selling commercial services on the NBN concluding in early January, leading to a situation in which NBN Co might stop signing up new end users to the infrastructure.
However, with some key modifications made to the contract last week, most of the several dozen telcos that signed up to buy services from NBN Co had signed the contract.
Optus, and Telstra, which had a more complex relationship with NBN Co courtesy of its $11-billion deal to transfer its customers onto the NBN infrastructure, though did not.
