1. "A single provider would provide a more uniform outcome."
Yet its expected that in brownfields there were going to be 5 or 6 constructions companies. If NBNco had documented its construction standards in suffient detail and had appropriate qualified QA staff, then there should be a uniform standard irrespective of the number of contractors used.
Also clearly Mr Wilson does not understand the Telecommunications construction industry, most of the work is outsourced under contracts anyway and you can see that Fujitsu has outsourced most of the work to ServiceStream who will outsource it to field subcontractors.
So in effect you have lots of companies doing the work anyway.
2. "Fujitsu stood well apart from the other providers"
As far as I am aware, Fujitsu has not built any FTTH estates anywhere in Australia and they have certainly not operated any GPON equipment. They did provide some small support role to Openetworks - who uses Wave7's EPON solution - but it is my understanding that agreement fell apart some months ago due to Fujitsu's inablity to deliver.
It was also claimed by NBNco that Fujitsu had the scale to do this work and no other provider could do this on a national basis. On the same day of the announcement the CEO of Fujitsu Australia said they would have to employee 200 staff to do this work. So Fujitsu dont have the staff at the moment to do the work; they need to get them onboard; and they need to have them trained. As the contract is only for 18 months I would suggest these will be contractors and not permanent staff. Who is going to train them in GPON and FTTH, as this type of experience is limited in Australia at this point in time. Training is also one thing, the practical experience takes years to learn and master.
In my opinion Fujitsu has a significant scalability issue, lacks the staff to deliver the outcomes and doesnt have the training programs in place to support a rapid deployment. They also lack any experience in the deployment of GPON and have little or no experience in FTTH deployments other than a few small estates in a support role to Openetworks.
"The industry was consulted on all standards through representative group Communications Alliance."
In my opinion this is the biggest lie of them all. Most of the work which has been published by Communications Alliance has been ignored by NBNco particularly in regards to the "early stage deployments working group" (aka Greenfields working group)
3 comments:
- At 19 May, 2011 14:09 Anonymous said...
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Spot on comments - in the press release they even talk about the equipment they will be supplying - passive and active. Frankly given all the materials to be provided you would be hard pressed to build to a different standard any way.
- At 19 May, 2011 17:39 Anonymous said...
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Some interesting considerations about the Fujitsu appointment
+ Fujitsu is a Cisco Gold partner and Asia Pacific region Multinational Partner
+ Fujitsu is also a Platinum level Oracle Partner (now owner of Sun Microsystems)
+ Archie Wilson - Director of Greenfields @ NBNco, previously worked as Director of Service Provider Sales at Cisco and was head of the Cisco NBN Task Force.
+ Jim Hassell - Head of product development and sales at NBNco , previously was the MD of Sun Microsystems.
+ Both would have known Fujitsu well in their previous rolls.
+ Mr Wilson and Mr Hassell where both involved in the selection process of the "panel" of greenfield operators. - At 15 July, 2011 08:42 Anonymous said...
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The public were sold on the idea of Fujitsu being an expereinced GReenfields operator. As I understand it they are now frantically employing to buy in the expertise.
