Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network

The Australian government just found the infrastructure for its A$43 billion national broadband project and eliminated its largest competitor in one fell swoop — pending shareholder and regulator approval, Telstra will receive A$11 billion of that money in exchange for its entire landline network. Telstra will decommission its monopoly of copper cables to make room for the government’s fiber and migrate its customers to the resulting 100Mbps National Broadband Network (NBN) as those light-bearing threads roll out. While Telstra might become a smaller player in the internet and cable business without a land network of its own, it may get even larger in the wireless space — the company says it’s received “written confirmation from the Prime Minister” that it can bid on a chunk of precious LTE spectrum should the deal go through. Press release after the break.

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Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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