Crown Fibre Holdings Chair Simon Allen today announced that 33 proposals had been received from various parties and consortiums to participate in the Government's Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative.Friday was the cut-off for full bids.Intriguingly, there are
Crown Fibre Holdings Chair Simon Allen today announced that 33 proposals had been received from various parties and consortiums to participate in the Government’s Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative.
Friday was the cut-off for full bids.
Intriguingly, there are two bids to cover the whole country (would-be participants had the the option to bid to supply fibre-to-the-home for one of the government's proposed Local Fibre Company cities and regions, or all 33).
One, presumably, is from Telecom.
Intriguingly, there has also been a proposal put forward by "an international fibre provider" - but this may or may not be the other party bidding to cover the whole of New Zealand.
Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH) has been established to manage the Crown's $1.5 billion investment in ultra-fast broadband infrastructure over the next ten years. In October 2009, an Invitation to Participate (“ITP”) was issued to interested parties to submit proposals to participate in the Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative with Crown Fibre Holdings.
“I am pleased that CFH received 33 proposals from 18 respondents including two competitive national solutions,” Mr Allen said. “All 33 local fibre areas have proposals, and it is very pleasing that there are a number of proposals from regional New Zealand which have strong community support.”
International contender
“CFH is also very pleased to have received a proposal from an experienced international fibre operator,” Mr Allen said. “There is no doubt that, given the quantity of proposals received, that CFH has a number of options to meet the Government requirement of rolling out ultra- fast broadband to 75% of New Zealand’s population, and this is an encouraging step towards achieving that goal.”
So far, Communications Minister Steven Joyce has offered no timeline for deciding how Crown Fibre Holdings invests, or with whom.
Mr Allen indicated that CFH will announce within two weeks an indicative timetable for the process going forward to assess the proposals received.
