The OECD has recently released is Broadband Statistics for year ending December 2007.

There are a number of interesting points which are raised, including an acceleration of FTTH and FTTB deployments and subsciptions. As of December 8% of all broadband connections in the OECD are Fibre based. In Japan FTTH/FTTB accounts for 40% of all broadband subscriptions and 34% in Korea.

Of considerable note were the various recommendations to OECD nations. The report recommends that if governments are providing money to [partially] fund broadband rollouts, it should avoid creating a new monopoly. My point exactly and what we at the SIG recommended to government. This leads onto the second recommendation where the "government should promote competition and give consumers more choice...[and] should encourage new networks". To be consistant with these recommendation and deliver the best outcome to the consumer the NBN should be an overbuild creating two competing infrastructure networks, allowing the market to drive and set pricing rather than a government regulator.

Following one "any new infrastructure built using government funds should be open access – meaning that access to that network is provided on non-discriminatory terms to other market participants", that is certainly the mainstay of the NBN request for proposals, but will it be the outcome.

This is an initial review of the summary information. I will add more detail to this analysis during the week.